THE CRUSADES 



GEORGE W. COX, M.A. 

// 

AUTHOR OF 

HISTORY OF GREECE ' ' MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS ' 

ETC. 



WITH A MAP 



BOSTON 
ESTES AND LAURIAT 

143 WASHINGTON STREET 

1874 




.iiTiii/rmns 



K> 



By Transfer 



CONTENTS. 






( IIAPTER I. 
CAUSES LEADING TO THE CRUSADES. 

PAGE 

The crusades a scries of popular wars . . . i 
Distinction between the crusades and other wars of 

the Middle Ages 

Absence of local feeling in the earliest Christian 

traditions 

The Christianity of St. Paul .... 
The Christianity of the Roman empire 

Localism of heathen religions^ 

Influence of these local religions on Christianity 
Growth of local associations in Palestine . 



Growth of pilgrimage to the holy places of Palestine 7 
Gradual decay of spiritual religion .... 9 
Encouragement given to pilgrimages ... 9 

Trade in relics 10 

Stimulus given by pilgrimages to commerce with the 

East 10 

The long struggle between Rome and Persia . . 10 

611 Capture of Jerusalem by the Persian king Khosru II. 10 

Persian invasion of Egypt . . . , .11 

622-625 Campaigns of the emperor Heraclius . . .11 

627 Battle of Nineveh . . . . . . . ir 

628 Restoration of the True Cross by the Persians . 12 

629 Pilgrimage of Heraclius to Jerusalem . . .12 
637 Conquest of Palestine by Omar ,. . . .12 

Terms of the treaty made by Omar with the Chris- 
tians of Jerusalem 12 



viii Contents. 

FACE 
13 



A.D. 



Omar and the patriarch Sophronios . 

Effects of Arabian conquest on pilgrimage to J 

salem z ~ 

Uninterrupted continuance of pilgrimage . . 14 

1010 Ravages of the Egyptian sultan Hakem in Jerusalem 14 

Persecution of Jews in Europe j r 

Tax levied on pilgrims at the gates of Jerusalem . 15 
Expectation of the end of the world a.d. 1000 . 15 

997 Conversion of Hungary under king Stephen . . 16 
Advance of the Seljukian Turks . . . .16 

1092 Division of the Seljukian empire . . . .16 
Appeal of the Greek emperor Alexios to Western 
Christendom I7 

1076 Seljukian conquest of Jerusalem . . . .17 
Increased burdens of the Christian pilgrims . . 17 
Decline of commerce with the East . . . .18 
Oppression of the Christians of Palestine . . 18 
General indignation felt in Western Christendom . 18 
Need of a religious sanction to sustain and direct 
this feeling Ig 



CHAPTER II. 

THE COUNCIL OF CLERMONT. 



Influence of Roman imperialism on the early popes . 19 

Schemes and motives of Gregory VII. ... 21 

1074 His circular letter to the faithful . . . .21 

1 08 1 The Normans in Italy 22 

1095 Council of Piacenza 23 

Council of Clermont 25 

1093 Pilgrimage of the hermit Peter to Jerusalem . . 25 

1094 The mission and preaching of the hermit . . 26 

1095 Decrees of the council of Clermont prohibiting private 

wars and confirming the Truce of God ... 28 

Speech of Urban II. before the people ... 29 

The assent of the multitude 30 

The cross and the vow of the crusaders . . .31 

Motives of the crusaders 3I 






Contents. ix 

A. D. . PAGE 

Financial effects of the crusades . . . .33 
Effects of the crusades on the power of the pope 

and the clergy -,4 

Dispensing power of the pope 34 

Tendency of the crusades to break up the feudal 

system -, . 

Increasing wealth of the pope and the clergy . . 35 

Alienation, and pledging or mortgaging, of lands . 35 

The crusades not national enterprises . . .36 

1085 Condition of Europe in the time of Urban II. -37 



CHAPTER III. 

THE FIRST CRUSADE. 



1096 Departure of the first rabble of crusaders under 

Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless . . 38 

Second rabble under Emico and Gotschalk . . 39 
Bloody persecutions of the Jews . . . .39 

The Jews taken under the protection of the empire . 40 
March of Walter and his followers through Hungary 

and Bulgaria 40 

Passage of the pilgrims across the Bosporos . . 40 

Their utter destruction by Kilidje Arslan . . 41 

Rank and character of the leaders of the first crusade 41 

Godfrey of Bouillon and his brothers Baldwin 

and Eustace 42 

Hugh of Vermandois 42 

Robert of Normandy 42 

Robert of Flanders, and Stephen of Chartres . 43 

Adhemar, bishop of Puy 43 

Raymond of Toulouse 43 

Bohemond 43 

Tancred 44 

Cause and effect of chivalry 44 

Knighthood 46 

Courtesy 47 



x Contents. 

A.D. PAGE 

August Departure of the main army of the erusaders under 

Godfrey 47 

Captivity of Hugh of Vermandois . . . .48 
Christmas Arrival of Godfrey before the walls of Constanti- 
nople 

Policy of the emperor Alexios . 

Compact between Alexios and the crusaders 

Homage of the crusaders to Alexios 

Disastrous march of Raymond of Toulouse to Con- 
stantinople 

Refusal of Raymond to do homage 

1097 Conduct of Alexios to the crusaders 
March Passage of the crusaders across the Bosporos 

Thorough antagonism between the crusaders and 
the Greeks ....... 

Contrast between the Greek and Latin clergy . 
Numbers of the crusaders .... 

June Siege and fall of Nice (Nikaia) 

July 4 Battle of Dorylaion 

March to Cogni and the Pisidian Antioch 
Quarrel between Godfrey and Tancred at Tarsus 
Conquest of Edessa by Baldwin 
October Arrival of the crusaders before the Syrian Antioch 

Siege of Antioch 

Folly of the besiegers 

Famine in the crusading camp .... 
Arrival of envoys from the sultan of Egypt 
Their terms rejected by the crusaders 

1098 Fierce warfare between the Christians and the Turks 
March Plans of Bohemond for the reduction of Antioch 
June Betrayal of Antioch to Bohemond . 

Arrival of the Persians under Kerboga . 
Desertion of Stephen of Chartres 
Desperate straits of the crusaders in Antioch 
Discovery of the Holy Lance . 
Fate of the discoverer .... 

June 28 Battle of Antioch 

Defeat of Kerboga ..... 
Antioch made a principality for Bohemond 
Mission of Hugh of Vermandois to Constantinople 



Contents. 



XI 



A.D. PAGE 

Death of Adhemar, bishop of Puy . . . .68 

Siege and capture of Marra 68 

1099, May March of the crusaders from Antioch . . .69 

June Siege of Jerusalem 70 

July Storming of the city 72 

Adoration of the crusaders in the church of the 

Sepulchre 72 

Exaltation of Peter the Hermit . . . -73 

Second and deliberate massacre in Jerusalem . . 73 
Comparison of Omar and Godfrey . . . .74 
Election of Godfrey to the sovereignty of Jerusalem 74 

Battle of Ascalon 74 

Return of the pilgrims to Europe . • • 75 



CHAPTER IV. 



THE LATIN KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM. 



1099-1100 Reign of Godfrey . 

Daimbert, patriarch of Jerusalem 

Assize of Jerusalem . 

Judicial courts instituted by Godfrey 
1100-1118 Baldwin I 



Death of Stephen of Chartres . 
Death of Raymond of Toulouse 
Sequel of the career of Bohemond 
Death of Tancred .... 
Effect of the crusades on the Byzantine 
Fresh swarms of pilgrims . 
Death of Hugh of Vermandois 
Death of the emperor Alexios 
1118-1131 Baldwin II., king of Jerusalem 
1115 Conquest of Sidon 

1 124 Conquest of Tyre 

1131-1144 Fulk, king of Jerusalem 
1144-1162 Baldwin III. 
1 1 45 Fall of Edessa . 



1101 
1 105 



1101 
1118 



empire 



75 

75 
76 
76 
77 

73 
78 
73 
79 
79 
So 
So 
Si 
Si 

32 

82 

82 
82 



Xll 



Contents. 



CHAPTER V. 
THE SECOND CRUSADE. 



Bernard the apostle of the second crusade 
Sources of Bernard's influence . 
1 137 Death of Louis VI. of France 

1 146 Council of Vezelai . 
Easter Speech of Bernard . 

\ The Knights Templars . 

Reluctance of Conrad, emperor of Germany, to join 
the crusade 

1 147 Meeting of Louis VII. and the pope at St. Denys 
Whitsun- Persecution of the Jews stirred up by the monk 

tide Rodolph 

Suppressed by Bernard 

March of the crusaders under Conrad and Louis 
Refusal of Conrad to meet the emperor Manuel at 

Constantinople .... 
Supposed treachery of Manuel 
Disastrous march of Conrad and Louis 

1 148 Visit of the French king to Jerusalem 
March Resolution to attack Damascus 

Siege of Damascus . 
Treachery of the barons of Palestine 
Retreat of the army to Jerusalem 
Failure of the crusade 
Accusations against St. Bernard 
His answer .... 
1 153 Death of St. Bernard 



PAGE 

83 

85 
85 
3b 

87 
87 



87 



89 
90 
90 
91 
91 
91 
92 
92 
92 
92 
93 
93 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE LOSS OF JERUSALEM. 

Misuse of victory by the crusaders . 
1 151 Death of Joceline of Courtenay 
1 153 Siege and fall of Ascalon . 



94 
94 

94 



Contents. xiii 

A - D - TAGE 

1162 Death of Baldwin III. Almeric elected king of 

Jerusalem q^ 

Relations of Almeric with the sultans of Egypt and 

Aleppo 9- 

Mission of Shiracouh and Saladin to Egypt . . 95 

Siege and surrender of Shiracouh in Pelusium . . 96 

1 163 Defeat of the Latins by Noureddin, sultan of Aleppo 96 
Alliance of Almeric with the Egyptian sultan . . 96 

1 167 Operations of Almeric against Shiracouh . . . 97 
Real designs of Almeric ...... 97 

1 168 Expedition of Almeric to Pelusium 
His ignominious retreat . 
Rise of Saladin to power in Egypt 

1 169 Attempts to stir up a crusade 99 

1171 Suppression of the Fatimite caliphat by Saladin . 99 

Quarrel between Saladin and the sultan of Aleppo . '99 

1 173 Death of Noureddin, sultan of Aleppo . . . 100 

Character of Noureddin ...... 100 

Baldwin IV., king of Jerusalem .... 100 

1 186 Baldwin V., king of Jerusalem ior 

Guy of Lusignan, king of Jerusalem . . . . 101 
Preparations of Saladin for the rc-conquest of Jeru- 
salem 101 

1 187 Battle of Tiberias 102 

July Capture of Guy of Lusignan 103 

Loss of the True Cross ...... 103 

Fruits of the victory of Saladin .... 103 

Siege and fall of Jerusalem ..... 103 

Terms of the capitulation 105 

Departure of the Latins from the Holy City . . 105 
Entry of Saladin into Jerusalem .... 106 
Escape of Tyre under Conrad ..... 106 
Further conquests of Saladin ..... 107 
Causes of weakness in the kingdom of Jerusalem . 107 

(1) Bad faith in dealing with the Moslem . . 107 

(2) Disregard of rights of property . . . 107 

(3) Lax military discipline 107 

(4) Total lack of statesmanship . . . 108 

(5) General immorality 108 

(6) Desultory character of the crusades . . 108 



xiv Contents. 



FACE 

(7) Quarrels and feuds of the Latin chiefs . 109 

(8) Antagonistic jurisdictions of the civil power, 

the church, and the military orders . . 109 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE THIRD CRUSADi:. 



Fictitious or romantic portraits of Richard I. of Eng- 
land . . . . . . . . .110 

Real character of the actors in the third crusade . in 

Decay of the crusading spirit in 

Change in the character of the crusades . . .112 
1 174 Henry II. of England and the patriarch of Jerusalem 113 

1187 Death of Urban III 114 

Pontificate of Gregory VIII .114 

118S Assumption of the cross by Henry II. and Philip 

Augustus of France 115 

Saladin tax or tenth 115 

Feuds in the family of Henry II 115 

1189 Death of Henry II. 117 

July Preparations of Richard I. for the crusade . .117 

Modes of raising money . . . . . .117 

Persecution and massacre of Jews in England . .118 
Fearful tragedy in York castle 118 

1 190 Meeting of Richard and Philip at Vezelai . . 120 
Poetry and influence of the troubadours . . .120 
March of Frederick I., Barbarossa, to Constanti- 
nople 120 

The popes and the empire ..... 120 

Death of Frederick 1 121 

Re-occupation of Antioch 121 

1189 Siege of Acre by the Latins of Palestine . . . 122 
Rise of the Teutonic order . . . . .122 

1190 Death of Sibylla, queen of Jerusalem . . . 123 
Conrad, titular king of Jerusalem .... 123 

Sept. 23 Voyage of the English fleet to Lisbon and Messina . 123 
Conduct of Richard I. in Sicily .... 124 
Quarrel between Richard and Philip Augustus . .124 



Contents. xv 

PAGE 



1 191 War between Richard and the Comnenian emperor 
March of Cyprus 

Arrival of Richard and Philip at Acre 

July 12 Surrender of Acre 

Return of Philip to France .... 
Massacre of five thousand Turkish hostages . 
Victory of Richard at Azotus .... 
Abortive negotiations with Saladin . 
Feud between the English king and the duke of 
Austria 

1192 Henry of Champagne, titular king of Jerusalem 
March of Richard towards Jerusalem 
Retreat of the army from Bethlehem 

Relief of Jaffa 

Truce between the crusaders and Saladin 

Pilgrimage to Jerusalem 

Results of the third crusade .... 
Captivity of Richard I. in Austria . 

1193 Exertions made for the liberation of Richard . 
Richard before the diet at Hagenau . 

1 1 94 Release of Richard 

His return to England 



125 
126 
127 
127 
127 
128 
128 



129 
130 
130 
130 
131 
131 
131 
132 
132 
133 
134 
135 
135 



CHAPTER VII r. 

THE FOURTH CRUSADE. 

Motives of the chief promoters of the fourth crusade 135 
1 193 Death of Saladin and its consequences . . . 136 
Encouragement given to the crusade by the emperor 
Henry VI 136 

1 196 Death of Henry VI. 137 

Arrival of his barons with their troops in the Holy 

Land 137 

Capture of Jaffa by Saphadin 137 

Arrival of fresh crusaders under Conrad, bishop of 

Hildesheim 137 

1 197 Siege of the castle of Thoron ..... 137 
Complete defeat of the crusaders .... 138 
Capture of Jaffa, and massacre of the crusaders . 138 
Almeric of Lusignan, king of Jerusalem and Cyprus 139 



xvi Contents. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE FIFTH CRUSADE. 
A.D. PAGE 

1198 Election of Innoce t III 139 

Effect of the crusades in extending the jurisdiction 

of the pope 140 

Weakening of the imperial power .... 141 
Growing mistrust of the court of Rome by the 

peoples of Europe i.- 

Efforts of Innocent to remove this mistrust . . 14 

Fulk of Neuilly 143 

The mission of Fulk sanctioned by the pope . .144 

Effects of his eloquence 144 

1202 Death of Fulk ........ 145 

1200 The chiefs of the fifth crusade ... . . . 145 

1201 Mission from the French barons to Venice . . 145 
Compact for the conveyance of the crusaders to 

Palestine 146 

1202 Failure of the crusaders to make up the sum agreed 

on with the Venetians 147 

Proposal to commute the payment by an expedition 

against Zara ........ 147 

1 195 Mission to Rome to ask aid for the dethroned 

Byzantine emperor, Isaac Angelus . . . 148 

Determination of the Venetians to insist on the 

expedition to Zara ...... 149 

1202 Siege and conquest of Zara, Nov. 15 . . . 149 
Proposal to divert the crusade to the restoration of 

Alexios at Constantinople 150 

Resolution to accept the terms proposed by Alexios 151 
Negotiations with the pope for the removal of the 

interdict ........ 151 

1203 Vain attempts of Innocent to oppose the expedition 152 
Easter Arrival of the fleet at Constantinople . . . 153 

Flight of the usurper Alexios 153 

The crusaders are compelled to winter at Constanti- 
nople 154 

Efforts of Mourzoufle to detach Alexios from the 

crusaders 155 



Contents. xvii 



PAGE 



Deposition and death of Alexios . . . .155 

Resolution to set up a Latin dynasty in Constanti- 
nople I5 6 

1204 Siege and conquest of Cc stantinople . . .156 
April Horrible excesses of the crusaders . . . .157 

Election of Baldwin, count of Flanders, as emperor 
of the East z e8 

Election of Thomas Morosini as patriarch of Con- 
stantinople . \"Q 

Embassies from Baldwin and the Venetians to the 
Pope I59 

Answers of Innocent III. !6 

Results of the crusade to the pope and to the Vene- 
tians 



161 



CHAPTER X. 

THE LATIN EMPIRE OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 

Contrast between the Greeks and the Latins . . 163 
Attempt to upset the civilisation of the old empire . 163 
Conduct of the pope towards the Greek clergy . 164 

Opposition of the French clergy to the new patriarch 165 
Partition of the empire among the crusading chiefs . 166 

1204 Rise of new empires at Nice, Trebizond, and Du- 

razzo l67 

1205 Massacre of the Latins in Thrace by order of the 

Bulgarian Calo-John xS 7 

April Captivity of the emperor Baldwin . . . .168 

Death of Baldwin z 68 

1206-1216 Henry I., brother of Baldwin, emperor of Con- 
stantinople !6q 

1207 Assassination of Calo-John 169 

Wise government of the emperor Henry . . . 170 
Death of Henry ....... 170 

Peter of Courtenay, emperor of Constantinople . 170 

1218 Captivity and death of Peter of Courtenay . . 171 

1219 Robert, emperor of Constantinople . . . . i 7 r 
1228 John of Brienne, emperor of Constantinople, . . 172 

a 



xviii Contents. 

A.D. PACK 

1235 Siege of Constantinople by Vataces . . .173 

1237-1261 Baldwin II., emperor of Constantinople . . .173 

Efforts to raise money 173 

Sale of relics 173 

1255 Death of Vataces 174 

1259 The envoys of Baldwin repelled by Michael Paleo- 

logos 174 

1261 Recovery of Constantinople by the Greeks . . 174 
July Permanent alienation of the East from the West . 175 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE SIXTH CRUSADE. 

Chief features of the sixth crusade .... 176 

Depression of the Latins in Palestine . . . 177 

1204 Truce between Saphadin and the Christians . . 177 

1210 John of Brienne, titular king of Jerusalem . . 178 

Zeal of Innocent III. in promoting a new crusade . 178 

Robert of Courcon 178 

1215 Fourth council of Lateran 179 

1216 Crusade of Andrew, king of Hungary . . . 179 

1218 Siege of Damietta ....... 180 

Death of Saphadin 180 

Terms of peace offered by Coradin .... 180 

Mad rejection of the terms by the crusaders . . 180 

1219 Fall of Damietta, Nov. 5 180 

1220 March of the Christians for Cairo .... 181 
The old terms again rejected ..... 181 
Ruin of the crusaders ...... 181 

1212 Frederick II., grandson of Barbarossa . . .181 

The popes and the emperors 182 

Otho of Brunswick 182 

1214 Battle of Bouvines ....... 183 

1216 Honorius III., pope 183 

1221 Loss of Damietta 183 

1222 Treaty of Ferentino 184 

1225 Treaty of San Germano . . . . ' .184 

Frederick, king of Naples, Sicily, and Jerusalem . 184 



Contents. xix 

A. P. PAGE 

1227 Gregory IX., pope 185 

Excommunication of the emperor .... 187 

1228 Departure of Frederick from Brundusium . . 18S 
Landing of Frederick at Ptolemais . . . .188 

1229 Treaty between Frederick and the sultan Kameel . 189 
Feb. 18 Frederick at Jerusalem 189 

Moderation of the emperor 190 

Condemnation of the treaty by Gregory IX. . . 191 

Return of the emperor with the crusaders to Europe 191 

Renewed excommunication of the emperor . . 192 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE SEVENTH CSUSADE. 

Richard, earl of Cornwall, king of the Romans 
Charges of peculation against the papal collectors 
1230 Opposition of the pope and the emperor to the new 
crusade ........ 

1239 Arrival of the French crusaders at Acre . 
Their complete failure ..... 

1240 The English crusade ...... 

Treaty between Richard of Cornwall and the Egyp 

tian sultan ....... 

1242 Invasion of the Korasmians .... 

Alliance of the Templars with the Syrians 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Till: EIGHTH CRUSADE. 



1245 Council of Lyons .... 
1226 Louis IX., king of France 

Louis IX., the pope, and the emperor 
1245 Assumption of the cross by Louis IX. 

1248 Departure of Louis from France 

1249 Capture of Damietta 
March of the army towards Cairo . 



192 
193 

193 
194 
194 
194 

194 
194 
195 



• 195 
. 196 
. 198 
. 200 
. 201 
. 202 
. 202 
Total defeat of the forces under the count of Artois 203 



xx Contents. 

A.D. PAGE 

1250 The king taken prisoner 203 

Firmness of the king ...... 204 

Terms of ransom . 204 

Murder of Turan Shah 204 

Release of Louis IX 205 

Pilgrimage of Louis to Nazareth .... 205 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE NINTH CRUSADE. 



Comparison of the earlier and later crusades . . 206 
1259 Battle between the Templars and Hospitallers . . 206 
1263 Invasion of Palestine by the Mameluke sultan 

Bibars 207 

Loss of Antioch ....... 207 

1270 Second crusade of Louis IX 208 

Death of the king 208 

1271 Capture of Nazareth by Edward, son of Henry III. of 

England 208 

1272 Return of Edward to Europe ..... 209 
Vain efforts of Gregory X. to stir up a crusade . 209 
Claims to the titular kingdom of Jerusalem . . . 210 

1291 Loss of Acre 210 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE SEQUEL OF THE RELIGIOUS WARS. 

Gradual decay and extinction of the crusading spirit 211 
Persecution and suppression of the Knights Templars 212 

The Albigensian crusades 213 

The Children's crusades 215 

Indirect results of the crusades .... 216 



MAP, 

General Map for the History of the 
Crusades To face title-page 



THE CRUSADES. 

CHAPTER I. 
CAUSES LEADING TO THE CRUSADES. 

The Crusades were a series of wars, waged by men who 
wore on their garments the badge of the Cross as a 
pledge binding them to rescue the Holy Land The 
and the Sepulchre of Christ from the grasp of crusades— 
the unbeliever. The dream of such an enter- popular 



wars. 



prise had long floated before the minds of 
keen- sighted popes and passionate enthusiasts : it was 
realised for the first time when, after listening to the 
burning eloquence of Urban II. at the council A D Iog5 
of Clermont, the assembled multitude with one Nov - 
voice welcomed the sacred war as the will of God. If 
we regard this undertaking as the simple expression of 
popular feeling stirred to its inmost depths, we may 
ascribe to the struggle to which they thus committed 
themselves a character wholly unlike that of any earlier 
wars waged in Christendom, or by the powers of Christen- 
dom against enemies who lay beyond its pale. States- 
men (whether popes, kings, or dukes) might have availed 
themselves eagerly of the overwhelming impulse imparted 
by the preaching of Peter the Hermit to passions long 
pent up ; but no authority of pope, emperor, or king, 
could suffice of itself to open the floodgates for the 

B 



2 The Crusades. ch. i. 

waters which might sweep away the infidel. In this 

sense only were men stirred, whether at the council of 

Piacenza in 1094, or in that of Clermont, to a strife of a 

wholly new kind. If Urban II. gave his blessing to the 

missionaries who were to convert the Saracens at the 

point of the sword, the papal benediction had 

been given nearly thirty years before at the 

instigation of Hildebrand to the expedition by which the 

Norman William hoped to crush the free English people 

and usurp the throne of the king whom they had chosen. 

But the movement of the Norman duke against 

England was merely the work of a sovereign well awake 

to his own interest and confident in the 

between'the methods by which he chose to promote it. 

crusades and Tj n ol er the sacred standard sent to him by 

other wars ot * 

the Middle Pope Alexander II. he gathered, indeed, a 
motley host of adventurers ; but the religious 
enthusiasm by which these may have fancied themselves 
to be animated had reference chiefly to the broad acres 
to which they looked forward as their recompense. The 
great gulf which separated such an undertaking from the 
crusade of the hermit Peter lay in the conviction, deep 
even to fanaticism, that the wearers of the Cross had 
before them an enterprise in which failure, disaster, and 
death were not less blessed, not less objects of envy and 
longing, than the most brilliant conquests and the most 
splendid triumphs. They were hastening to the land 
where their Divine Master had descended from his 
throne in heaven to take on Himself the form of man — 
where for years the everlasting Son of the Almighty 
Father had patiently toiled, healing the sick, comforting 
the afflicted, and raising the dead, until at length He 
carried his own Cross up the height of Calvary, and 
having offered up his perfect sacrifice, put off the gar- 
ments of his humiliation when the earthquake shattered 



ch. i. Causes leading to the Crusades. 3 

the prison-house of his sepulchre, For them the whole 
land had been rendered holy by the tread of his sacred 
feet : and the pilgrim who had traced the scenes of his 
life from his cradle at Bethlehem to the spot of his 
ascent from Olivet, might sing the Nunc dimittis, as 
having with his own eyes seen the divine salvation. 

Thus the crusade preached by Peter the Hermit, and 
solemnly sanctioned by Pope Urban, was rendered pos- 
sible by the combination of papal authority Absence of 
with an irresistible popular conviction. That j ocal feeling- 

... .. , r i in the earliest 

papal authority was the necessary result of the christian 
old imperial tradition of Rome ; the popular tradltlons - 
conviction was the growth of a tendency whjch haji charac- 
terised every religion professed by Aryan or Semitic 
nations ; and both these causes were wholly unconnected 
with the teaching of Christ and of his disciples, as it is 
set before us in the New Testament. Far from ascribing 
special sanctity to any one spot over another, the emphatic 
declaration that the hour was come in which men should 
worship the Father not merely in Jerusalem or on the 
Samaritan mountain, proclaimed a gospel which taught 
that all men in all places are alike near to God in whom 
they live, move, and have their being. If we turn to the 
narrative which relates the Acts of the Apostles, we shall 
find not a sign of the feeling which regards Bethlehem, 
Jerusalem, or Nazareth, the Sea of Galilee, or the banks 
of the Jordan, as places which of themselves should 
awaken any enthusiastic or passionate feeling. The 
thoughts of the disciples, if we confine ourselves to this 
record, were absorbed with more immediate and momen- 
tous concerns . Before their generation should pass away, 
the Son of Man would return to judgement, and the dead 
should be summoned from their graves to his awful tri- 
bunal. Hence any vehement longing for one spot ot 
earth over another was wretchedly out of place for those 



4 The Crusades. C h. i. 

who held that the time was short, and that it behoved 
those who had wives to be as though they had none, 
those that bought as though they possessed not, and 
those that wept and rejoiced as though they wept and 
rejoiced not. Nay, more, with a feeling almost approaching 
to impatience, the great apostle of the Gentiles could put 
aside the yearnings of a weaker sentiment and declare 
that although he had known Christ in the flesh, yet 
henceforth he would so know Him no more. 

The image, therefore, of the great founder of Chris- 
tianity was for him purely spiritual. In the letters which 
_, _ . . he wrote to the churches formed by his con- 

The Chnsti- . .,-,,, 

anity of St. verts there is not a sign that the thought or 
the sight of Bethlehem or Nazareth would 
awaken in him any deeper feeling than places wholly 
destitute of historical associations. If he speaks of Je- 
rusalem, he never implies that it had for him any special 
sanctity. His mission was to preach a faith altogether 
independent of time and place, and not only not needing 
but even rejecting the sensuous aid afforded by visible 
memorials of the Master whom he loved. 

Such was the Christianity of St. Paul ; and with such 
weapons it went forth to assail and throw down the 
The Christi- strongholds of heathenism. Three centuries 
Roman" the * ater we ^ eno ^ Christianity dominant as the 
Empire. religion of the Roman Empire ; but in its 

outward aspect and in its practical working it has under- 
gone a vast and significant change. It cannot be sup- 
posed that this change was wrought at once by the mere 
fact of its recognition by the temporal power. The 
endless debates, which fill the history of early Chris- 
tianity, on the relations of the Persons of the Trinity and 
on the mystery of the Incarnation, may in some degree 
have helped to fix the minds of men on the land where 
the Saviour had lived, and on the several scenes of his 



ch. i. Causes, leading to the Crusades. 5 

ministry ; but this alone would never have sufficed to 
work the revolution which Christianity has manifestly 
undergone, even before we reach the age of Constan- 
tine. The victory won over heathenism, if not merely 
nominal, was at best partial. The religion of the empire 
knew nothing of the One Eternal God, who demands from 
all men a spontaneous submission to his righteous law, 
and bids them find their highest good in his divine love. 
That religion rested on the might of the Capitoline 
Jupiter and the visible majesty of the Emperor ; but the 
real influences which were at work from the first to 
modify the Christianity of St. Paul lay in the lower strata 
of society, in the modes of thought and feeling prevalent 
among the masses who furnished the converts of the first 
two or three centuries. In these converts we cannot 
doubt that there was wrought a real change, — a change 
manifest chiefly in the conviction that the divine law is 
binding on all, and that the state of things in the Roman 
world was unspeakably shameful. In the Jesus whom 
Paul preached they beheld the righteous teacher who 
condemned the iniquities of godless rulers and a corrupt 
people, the avenger of their unjust deeds, the loving Re- 
deemer in whose arms the weary and heavy-laden might 
find rest, the awful Judge who should be seen at the end 
of the world on his great white throne, with all the kin- 
dreds of mankind awaiting their doom before Him. The 
personal human love thus kindled in them turned only 
into a different channel thoughts and feelings which it 
would need centuries to root out. 

These thoughts and feelings had been fed by that ten- 
dency to localise incidents in the supposed history of 
gods or heroes which is the most prominent Localism of 
characteristic of all heathen religions ; and heathen 
of the vast crowd of these heathen religions re lsl ° ns ' 
or superstitions there was, if we may trust the state- 



6 The Crusades. ch. i. 

ments of Roman writers, scarcely one which had not its 
adherents and votaries at Rome. Here were gathered 
the priests and worshippers of the Egyptian Isis, the 
virgin mother of Osiris, the god who rose again after his 
crucifixion to gladden the earth with his splendour ; 
here might be seen the adorers of the Persian sun-god 
Mithras, born at the winter solstice, and growing in 
strength until he wins his victory over the powers of 
darkness after the vernal equinox. But this idea of the 
death and resurrection of the lord of light was no new 
importation brought in by the theology of Egypt or 
Persia. The story of the Egyptian Osiris was repeated 
in the Greek stories of Sarpedon and Memnon, of 
Tithonos and Asklepios (^Esculapius), of the Teutonic 
Baldur and Woden (Odin). The birthplace of these 
deities, the scenes associated with their traditional ex- 
ploits, became holy spots, each with its own consecrating 
legends, and not a few attracting to themselves vast 
gatherings of pilgrims. 

It was not wonderful therefore that the worshippers of 
these or other like gods should, on professing the faith of 
Influence of Christ, carry with them all that they could 
Jel^ionson retain of their old belief without utterly con- 
Christianity, tradicting the new ; that his nativity should be 
celebrated at the time when the sun begins to rise in the 
heavens, and his resurrection when the victory of light 
over darkness is achieved in the spring. The worshipper 
of the Egyptian Amoun, the ram, carried his old associa- 
tions with him when he became a follower of the Lamb 
of God; and the burst of light which heralded the return 
of the Maiden to the Mourning Mother in the Greek 
mysteries of Eleusis was reproduced in the miracle still 
repeated year by year by the patriarch of Jerusalem when 
he announces the descent of the sacred fire in the sepul- 
chre of Christ. 






ch. i. Causes leading to the Crusades. 7 

Thus for the Christians of the third century, if not of 
the second, Judaea or Palestine became a holy land ; and 
with the growth of devotion to the human Growth of 
person of Christ grew the feeling of reverence J°onstn S ° aa " 
for every place which He had visited and Palestine. 
every memorial which He had left behind Him. The 
impulse once given soon became irresistible. Every 
incident of the gospel narratives was associated with some 
particular spot, and the certainty of the verification was 
never questioned by the thousands who felt that the sight 
of these places brought them nearer to heaven and was 
in itself a purification of their souls. They could follow 
the Redeemer from the cave in which He was born and 
where the Wise Men of the East laid before Him their 
royal offerings, to the mount from which He uttered his 
blessings on the pure, the merciful, and the peacemakers, 
and thence to the other mount on which He offered his 
perfect sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. The 
spots associated with his passion, his burial, his resurrec- 
tion, called forth emotions of passionate veneration which 
were intensified by the alleged discovery of the cross on 
which He had suffered, together with the two crosses on 
which the thieves had been condemned to die. If the 
presence of the tablet containing the title inscribed by 
Pontius Pilate still left it uncertain to which of the crosses 
that tablet belonged, and to which therefore the homage 
of the faithful should be paid, all doubt was removed 
when a woman at the point of death on whom the touch 
of two of these crosses had no effect was restored to 
strength and youth by the touch of the third. 

The splendid churches raised by the devout zeal of 
Constantine and his mother Helena over the Growth of 
cave at Bethlehem and the sepulchre at pilgrimage 
Jerusalem became for the Christians that placet of 7 
which the sacred stone at Mecca and the Palestine - 



8 The Crusades. ch. i. 

tomb of the prophet at Medina became afterwards for the 
followers of Islam ; nor can we be surprised if the 
emperor whose previous life had been marked by special 
devotion to the Greek and Roman sun-god transferred 
the characteristics of Apollon (Apollo) to the meek and 
merciful Jesus whose teaching to the last he utterly 
misapprehended. The purpose which drew to Palestine 
the long lines of pilgrims, which each year increased in 
numbers, was not the mere aimless love of wandering 
which is supposed to furnish the motive for Tartar pil- 
grimages in our own as in former ages. The Aryan, so 
far as we know, was never a nomadic race ; but we can 
understand the eagerness even of a stationary population 
to undertake a long and dangerous journey, if the mere 
making of it should insure the remission of their sins- 
Nothing less than this was the pilgrim led to expect, who 
had traversed land and sea to bathe in the Jordan and 
offer up his prayers at the birthplace and tomb of his 
Master. A few men, of keener discernment and wider 
culture, might see the mischiefs lurking in this belief, and 
protest against the superstition. Augustine, the great 
doctor whose ' Confessions ' have made his name familiar 
to thousands who know nothing of his life or teaching, 
might bid Christians remember that righteousness was 
not to be sought in the East nor mercy in the West, and 
that voyages are useless to carry us to Him with whom 
a hearty faith makes us immediately present. In these 
protests he might be upheld by men like Gregory of 
Nyssa and Jerome ; but Jerome, while he dwelt on the 
uselessness of pilgrimage and the absurdity of supposing 
that prayers offered in one place could be more accept- 
able than the same prayers offered in another, took up his 
abode in a cave at Bethlehem, and there discoursed to 
Roman ladies, who had crossed the sea to listen to his 
splendid eloquence. Heaven, he insisted, was as acces- 



ch. i. Causes leading to the Crusades. 9 

sible from Britain as from Palestine : but his actions 
contradicted his words, and his example exercised a 
more potent influence than his precept. The purely 
spiritual faith on which Jerome laid stress was as much 
beyond the spirit of the age as the moral Gradual 
feelings of a later age were behind those of spSalrefr 
the woman who in the crusade of St. Louis gion. 
was seen carrying in her right hand a porringer of fire, 
and in her left a bottle of water. With the fire she 
wished, as Joinville tells us, to burn paradise, with the 
water to drown hell, so that none might do good for the 
reward of the one, nor avoid evil from fear of the other, 
since every good ought to be done from the perfect and 
sincere love which man owes to his Creator, who is the 
supreme good. Such a tone of thought was in ludicrous 
discord with the temper which brought Jerome himself 
to Bethlehem, and which soon began to fill the land with 
those who had nothing of Jerome's culture and the so- 
briety which in whatever degree must spring from it. 

The contagion spread. From almost every country 
of Europe wanderers took their way to Palestine, under 
the conviction that the shirt which they Encourage- 
wore when they entered the holy city would, "^j^f 1 
if laid by to be used as their winding- ages. 
sheet, convey them (like the carpet of Solomon in 
the Arabian tale) at once to heaven. An enterprise 
so laudable roused the sympathy and quickened the 
charity of the faithful. The pilgrim seldom lacked food 
and shelter, and houses of repose or entertainment were 
raised for his comfort on the stages of his journey as well 
as in the city which was the goal of his pilgrimage. 
Here he was welcomed in the costly house which had 
been raised for his reception by the munificence of Pope 
Gregory the Great. If he died during his absence, his 
kinsfolk envied rather than bewailed his lot : if he re- 



I o The Crusades. cir. i. 

turned, he had their reverence as one who had washed 
away his sins, and still more perhaps as one who had 
brought away in his wallet relics of value so vast and of 
virtue so great that the touch of them made the journey 
to Palestine almost a superfluous ceremony. Wherever 
Trade in these pilgrims went, these fragments of the true 
relics. cross might be found ; and the happy faith 

of those who gave in exchange for them more than their 
weight in gold never stopped to think that the barren log 
which was supposed to have produced them must in 
truth have spread abroad its branches wider than the 
most magnificent cedar in Libanus. Nor probably, 
even in the earliest ages, was the traffic consequent on 
these pilgrimages confined to holy things. The East 
was not only the cradle of Christianity, but 
given by a land rich in spices and silks, in gold 

tbcommfrce anc * jewels : and the keen-sighted merchant, 
with the looking to solid profits on earth, followed 

East 

closely on the steps of the devotee who sought 
his reward in heaven. 

The first interruption to the peaceful and prosperous 
fortunes of pilgrims and merchants was caused by 
one of the periodical ebbs and flows which for nearly 
The long seven hundred years had marked the struggle 
twefn Rome between the powers of Persia and of Rome. 
and Persia; The kings of the restored Persian kingdom 
had striven to avenge on the West the wrongs com- 
mitted by Alexander the Great, if not those even of 
earlier invaders ; and the enterprise which Khosru 

Nushirvan had taken in hand was carried 
Capture' of on forty years later by his grandson 
byThePer- Khosru (Chosroes) II. Almost at the 
sian king, outset of his irresistible course Jerusalem 

Khosru II. r ., • i #• -i #- i •»-» • 

fell, nor was it the fault of the Persians 
that the great churches of Helena and Constantine were 



572-627. Causes leading to the Crusades. 1 1 

not destroyed utterly by fire. Ninety thousand Chris- 
tians, it is said, were put to death: but, according to 
the feeling of the age, a greater loss was sustained in the 
carrying off of the true cross into Persia. From Palestine 
the wave of Persian conquest spread south- . 

, . , , r T ^. Persian 

ward into Egypt, and the greatness of Khosru invasion of 
seemed to be unbounded, when from an un- gypt 
known citizen of Mecca he received the bidding to 
acknowledge the unity of the Godhead and to own 
Mahomet as the prophet of God. The Persian king tore 
the letter to pieces, and the man of Mecca, whose suc- 
cessors were to carry the crescent to Jerusalem and 
Damascus, to the banks of the Nile and the mountains of 
Spain, warned him that his kingdom should be treated as 
he had treated his letter. 

For the present the signs of this catastrophe were not 
to be seen. The Roman emperor was compelled to sign 
an ignominious peace and to pay a yearly Campaigns 
tribute to the sovereign of Persia. But Hera- E m pe ror 
clius (Herakleios) woke suddenly from the Heraciius. 
sluggishness which marked the earlier years of his reign. 
The Persians were defeated among the defiles 
of Mount Taurus, and the destruction of the 
birthplace of Zoroaster offered some compensation for the 
mischief done to the churches of Helena and Constantine. 
Two years later the Roman emperor carried 
his arms into the heart of the enemy's land ; Battle of 
and during the battle of Nineveh, in which he Nineveh - 
won a splendid victory, he slew with his own hands the 
Persian general Rhazates. Khosru fled across the Tigris ; 
but he could not escape from the plots of his son, and his 
death in a dungeon ended the glories of the Sassanid 
dynasty, under whom the Persian power had, in the 
third century of our era, revived from the death-sleep 
into which it had sunk after the conquests of Alexander. 



12 The Crusades. 



CII. I. 



With Siroes, the son and murderer of Khosru, the 
Roman emperor concluded a peace which not merely- 
delivered all his subjects from captivity, but 
repaired the loss which the church of the 
Holy Sepulchre had sustained by the theft of the true 
Restoration cross. The great object of pilgrimage was 
crosslj^the thus restored to Jerusalem, and thither Hera- 
Persians, clius (Herakleios) during the following year 
a.d. 629. betook himself to pay his vows of thanks- 
Pilgrimage giving. With the pageant which marked this 

of Herachus ° ° , , , r ■, ■ 

tojeru- ceremony the splendour of his reign was 

saiem. closed. Before his death the followers of 

Mahomed had deprived him of the provinces which he 
had wrested from the Persians. 

Eight years only had passed after the visit of Hera- 
clius (Herakleios) to Jerusalem, when the armies which 
a.d. 637. had already seized Damascus advanced to 

SkstS by the sie & e of the Hol y Cit y- A blockade of four 
Omar. months convinced the patriarch Sophronios 

that there was no hope of withstanding the force of Islam : 
but he demanded the presence of the caliph himself at 
the ratification of the treaty which was to secure a second 
sacred capital to the disciples of the Prophet. After some 
debate his request was granted ; and Omar, who on the 
death of Abubekr had been chosen as the vicegerent of 
Mahomed, set out from Medina on a camel, which carried 
for him his leathern water-bottle, his bags of corn and 
dates, and his wooden dish. 

The terms imposed by the caliph sufficiently marked 
the subjection of the Christians, but they imposed no 
Terms of the severe hardships and perhaps showed a large 
byOmTr ade toleration. The Christians were to build no 
with the nevv churches, and they were to admit Maho- 

Lhnstians of . ' '.. 

Jerusalem. medans into those which they already had, 
whether by day or by night. The cross was no longer to 



637. Causes leading to the Crusades. 1 3 

be seen on the exterior of their buildings or to be paraded 
in the streets. The church-bells should be tolled only, 
not rung. The use of saddles and of weapons was alto- 
gether interdicted, and the Christians, distinguished from 
their conquerors by their attire, were to show their respect 
for the latter by rising up to them if they were sitting. 
On these conditions the Christians were not only to be 
safe in their persons and fortunes, but undisturbed in the 
exercise of their religion and in the use of their churches. 

For the observance of this last stipulation the rugged 
and uncouth conqueror showed a greater care than the 
patriarch who regarded his presence in the 
church of the Resurrection as the abomina- the patriarch 
tion of desolation in the holy place. The hour s °P hronios - 
of prayer came, and Omar asked Sophronios where he 
might offer his devotions. 'Here/ answered the pa- 
triarch ; but Omar positively refused, and repeated his 
refusal when he was led away into the church of Con- 
stantine. At last he knelt down on the steps outside that 
church, and afterwards told the patriarch that had he 
worshipped within the building, the document securing its 
use to the Christians would have been worthless. His 
words were verified by the zeal of his followers, who 
insisted on inclosing within a mosque the steps on which 
he had prayed : but the mosque which bears Omar's 
name rose over the great sacrificial altar of the temple, 
which passed for Jacob's stone. 

This second conquest may have again checked the 
rush of pilgrims to the Holy Land ; but the difficulties 
which it placed in their way only added to Effects f ' 
the glory and the benefits of the enterprise : Arabian con- 

i i • r^ %• -i t quest on 

and, after all, the victory of Omar did little pilgrimage to 
more than share the holy city between two J erusalem - 
races each of which acknowledged its sanctity and rever- 
enced the relics of the righteous men whose bodies reposed 



14 The Crusades. ck.r. 

beneath its sacred soil. Nor had the Christians any 
stronger ground of complaint than that the Saviour whom 
they worshipped was regarded by their conquerors as a 
prophet only inferior, if not equal, to the founder of 
Islam. 

Nearly four centuries had passed away after the sub- 
mission of Sophronios to Omar ; and during this long 
Uninter- series of generations the West had without let 

timiance°of or hindrance sent forth its troops of pilgrims, 
pilgrimage. in whose train merchants may have found 
sources of profit for more worldly callings. If the 
palmy days during which the wanderers might regard 
themselves as practically lords of the land through 
which they travelled had passed away, they underwent 
at the worst nothing which could greatly excite their 
anger or rouse the indignation of Christendom. 
ad. ioio. Nor was this state of things materially 

£ V E g6S ° f changed by the furious onslaught of Hakem, 
tian Sultan the mad Fatimite sultan of Egypt, when, 
Jerusalem. spurred on by a bigotry unknown to his 
predecessors, he resolved to destroy the Christian sanc- 
tuary in Jerusalem. The rule of these earlier sovereigns 
of Egypt had been more beneficial to the Christians than 
that of the Abbasside caliphs of Bagdad. But Hakem 
cared nothing for the worldly interests of his kingdom or 
of the profits to be derived from trade with the unbe- 
liever ; and his soldiers were busied on the dignified task 
of demolishing the church of the Resurrection, and in 
attempts to destroy with their hammers the very cave in 
which, as it was supposed, the body of the Saviour had 
been laid. In this task they had but a very partial success, 
and to Hakem probably the suspension for a single year 
of the descent of the sacred fire scarcely outweighed the 
risks of a combined attack from the maritime powers of 
Christendom. For the present no such alliance was 






Causes leading to the Crusades. 1 5 

threatened ; but a cruel persecution of the Jews 
many Christian cities was a symptom of 
the temper which was placing a great gulf 



many Christian cities was a symptom of 

the temper which was placing a great gulf S^fiT 

between men who professed nevertheless to Eui "°P e - 



worship the same Almighty Father. 

After this violent but transient storm the condition of 
the pilgrims became much what it had been before, except 
that a toll was now levied on each pilgrim before 
he was suffered to enter the gates of Jeru- Tax levied 
salem ; but this impost may have been °" P u g™ ms 
rather welcomed than resented by the Chris- of je^fakm. 
tians, as it gave to the richer among them an opportunity 
of discharging it for their poorer brethren, and so of secur- 
ing for themselves a higher degree of merit. The world, 
too, seemed to have taken a new lease of existence, and 
everything appeared to promise a long continuance of 
comparative peace. Ten years before, all A . D . iooo . 
Christendom was fluttering with the expecta- Ex pectation 
tion of immediate judgement. At the close the world. 
of the millennium, which came to an end with the 
year 1000, a belief almost universal looked forward to 
the summons which would call the dead from their graves 
and cut short the course of a weary and sin-laden world. 
But the tale of years had been completed, the sun con- 
tinued to rise and set as it had risen and set before, and 
the flood of pilgrims soon began to stream towards the 
East in greater volume than ever. Men of all ranks 
and classes left their homes to offer up their prayers at 
the tomb of Christ : bishops abandoned their dioceses, 
princes their dominions, to visit the scenes where the 
Redeemer had suffered and where He had achieved his 
triumph. More numerous, more earnest, more zealous 
than all, were the Franks or the Frenchmen, whose name 
became henceforth in the East the common designation 
of all Europeans. For the weak and the inexperienced, 



1 6 The Crusades. 



CH. I. 



for the women and the youths, who pledged themselves to 
the enterprise, there might be special and grave dangers ; 
nor were the strongest assured against serious, if not 
fatal, disasters. With thirty horsemen fully equipped, 
Ingulf, a secretary of William the Conqueror, set out on 
his journey to the Holy Land. Of these twenty returned 
on foot, with no other possessions than their wallet and 
their staff. But their losses had been caused probably 
by no human enemies, and the men who had died could 
claim the credit of martyrdom only in the sense in which 
it is accorded to the Holy Innocents massacred by the 
decree of Herod. On the whole, the difficulties of the 
a.d. 997. enterprise were as much smoothed down as in 

Conversion a rude and ill-governed age they could well 

of Hungary ° ° J 

under King be. The conversion of Hungary opened a 
Stephen. ^ Q highway across the heart of Europe, and 

the pilgrims had a defender, as well as a friend, in St. 
Stephen, the apostle of his kingdom. 

But a change far greater than that which had been 
wrought by Omar was to be effected by a power which 
had been working its way from the distant East and 
Advance of menacing the existence of the empire itself, 
the Seiju- From the deserts of central Asia the Selju- 
kian Turks had advanced westwards, over- 
running the kingdoms of the Persian empire, and 
a.d. 1092. subjugating Asia Minor, the inheritance of 
Se1kiju- 0f the Caesars of Rome. In this task they re- 
kian empire, ceived no slight help from the neutrality of a 
great part of the Christian population, in whom financial 
exactions and ecclesiastical tyranny had awakened feel- 
ings of strong discontent, if not of burning indignation. 
The rulers of Byzantium had, indeed, done all that they 
could to make the way smooth for the invaders. The 
accumulation of land in the hands of a few owners had 
dangerously diminished the number of inhabitants ; nor 



1076. Causes leading to the Crusades. \J 

was it long before the Turks were in a majority throughout 
Cappadocia, Phrygia, and Galatia, and were enabled suc- 
cessfully to resist the crusading hosts in countries which 
they had conquered but as yesterday. The Seljukian 
sovereigns who had advanced thus far on the road to Con- 
stantinople, chose as their abode that city of Nice (Nikaia, 
Nicaea) in which the first general council of 

' ° A. D. 325. 

Christendom had defined the Catholic faith on 
the doctrine of the Trinity in Unity. Here these fierce 
invaders proclaimed the mission of Mahometas the prophet 
of God, and issued the decrees which assigned Christian 
churches to profanation or destruction, and Christian youths 
and maidens to a disgraceful and shameful slavery. Moun- 
tains visible from the dome of Sancta Sophia Appeal of 
were already within the borders of Turkish the Greek 

J , Emperor 

territory. The danger seemed imminent, and Alexios to 
Alexios, the Emperor of the East, invoked ciSsten- 
the aid of Latin Christendom : but the fire dom. 
was not yet kindled, and for the time his appeal was 
made in vain. 

No long time, however, had passed before the Seljukian 
Toucush was master of Jerusalem ; and the Christians 
learnt to their cost that servitude to the fierce A-u . I<?7 6. 
wanderers from the northern deserts was very fon^^of 
different from submission to the rugged and Jerusalem. 
uncultured Omar. The lawful toll levied on the pilgrims 
gave way before a system of extortion and T ncreased 
violent robbery carried out in every part of burdens and 
the land ; and the mere journey to Jerusalem the Chmtian 
involved dangers from which the bravest p 11 ^ 1 " 15 - 
might well shrink. Insults to the persons of the pilgrims 
were accompanied by insults, harder to be borne, offered 
to the holy places and to those who ministered in them. 
The sacred offices were savagely interrupted, and the 
patriarch, dragged by his hair along the pavement, was 
C 



1 8 The Crusades 



CH. I. 



thrown into a dungeon, pending the payment of an 
exorbitant ransom. For the pilgrims themselves there 
might be dangers as they made their way through 
Europe : but these were increased tenfold on the eastern 
Decline of side of the Hellespont. Thus far they had 
with^he 6 journeyed in comparative security, and the 
East. merchants who sought to combine profit 

with devotion added to that security by their num- 
bers and their prudence. The Easter fair of Jerusalem 
had drawn to the ports of Palestine the fleets of Genoa 
and Pisa, and had sufficiently rewarded the munificence 
of the merchants of Amain, the founders of the hospital 
of St. John. But commerce has no liking for perils of 
flood and field : and with the risk of disaster these fleets 
disappeared and the caravans were confined to those for 
whom the sanctuary of Jerusalem was a goal to be 
reached at all costs. These went forth still by hundreds ; 
Oppression they returned by tens or units to recount the 
?f, ^ e . , miseries and wanton cruelties which they had 

Christians of . . 

Palestine. undergone, and to draw fearful pictures of the 
savage tyranny exercised over the Christians of Jerusalem 
and of the East generally. The church of Christ was in 
the iron grasp of the infidel, and the blood of his martyrs 
cried aloud for vengeance. Throughout the length and 
r, , • breadth of Christendom a fierce indignation 

General in- ' ° 

dignationfeit wa s stirring the hearts of men, and the pent- 
ChHsten-" 1 up waters needed only guidance to rush forth 
dom - as a flood over the lands defiled by the un- 

believer. But unless the enterprise was to run to waste 
in random efforts, it must have the solemn sanction of 
religion. The people might be ready, but popular fury 
acting by itself will soon spend its strength like the 
hurrying tempest. Princes might be willing for a time 
to abandon their dominions : but the pressure of diffi- 
culties abroad and at home would soon make them grow 



1076-1095. The Council of Clermont. 19 

weary of the task. There must be a constraining power 
to keep them to their vows by sanctions ^ T 

r Need of a 

which stretched beyond the present life to the religious 

sanctior 
sustain 
direct t 
feeling. 



life after death ; and these sanctions could 



sustain and 

come only from him who held the keys of the direcc this 
kingdom of heaven, and whose seat was the 
rock of Peter, Prince of the Apostles. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE COUNCIL OF CLERMONT. 

The pope is the bishop of Rome, and the traditions of 
the papacy delight in recalling the humble origin of his 
vast monarchy, at once spiritual and temporal, i n fl uen ce of 
ecclesiastical and secular. If the poor Gali- Roman im- 

, _ , . - _ , _,. perialism on 

laean fisherman ever entered the Eternal City, the early 
it was as a stranger who had come to be the P°P es - 
guide and friend of a small knot of men who saw and 
hated and wished to keep themselves aloof from the 
abominable corruption of Roman society. But if Chris- 
tianity itself, as we have seen (p. 6), was, when it had 
once taken root in the West, modified by the popular 
feelings and old associations of the converts, the consti- 
tution of the church was in like manner insensibly modi- 
fied by the political forms of the state with which it had 
at first to wage a terrible conflict. Rome was not as other 
cities : and the bishop of Rome could not long remain 
like the presidents of other churches. He was dealing 
with the subjects, and he lived in the heart, of the empire. 
It was inevitable that the imperial tradition should fasten 
on the object of their worship ; nor was it long before the 
exulting cry went up to heaven, Christ lives, Christ rules, 
Christ is emperor (Christus vivit, Christus regnat, Christus 
imperat). 



20 The Crusades. 



CH. II. 



As the vicars of this invisible emperor, the popes 
acquired gradually a power which overshadowed that of 
the mightiest sovereigns. It was exercised 
a.d. 5 7 o 4 . w .^ monast } c austerity by Gregory the 
Great ; it was wielded with the ability of a consummate 
a.d. io 73 - general by Gregory VII., Hildebrand. The 
1085. fi rst Gregory was a monk, therefore also a 

Manichean ; in other words, one who believed in the 
essential impurity of all matter ; but this philosophy, if 
it had any attractions for Gregory VII., was wholly sub- 
ordinate to the one absorbing passion of ecclesiastical 
dominion. His aim was to subdue the world by a 
spiritual army : but the issue of his conquest was not to 
be confined to spiritual influence. It was to give him 
power over kingdoms, dictation over princes, the command 
of their weapons and their wealth. It was to humble civil 
polity under priestly autocracy ; it was to prove, what 
Hildebrand scrupled not to assert, that the civil rule was 
in itself the mere developement and working of the evil 
principle. The foundations had long been laid ; but 
Hildebrand left to his successors not much to do towards 
completing the fabric of papal empire. His predeces- 
sors had learnt to avail themselves dexterously of popular 
feeling or the ambition of princes, to direct wide-spread 
movements, if not to create them. It was the papal 
sanction which had aided to depose the degenerate 
Merovingian ; it was the papal chrism which had 
anointed the first Carolingian king. It was the diadem 
of the ancient Cassars, bestowed by the hand of Leo III., 
which rested on the head of Charles the Great. It was 
Hildebrand himself who, by the hands of his instrument, 
Alexander II., had transferred the crown of England from 
the son of Godwine to William the Bastard of Normandy. 
It has been well remarked, that although the name had 
not yet been heard, yet in truth it was now that the first 



1073-10S5. The Council of Clermont. 21 

crusade was preached, and it was preached by the voice 
of Rome against the liberties of England. We may note 
further that the preacher was a pontiff who, when he 
found it convenient to thank the Sultan of Morocco for 
some indulgences granted to Christians in his territories, 
could assure that infidel ruler that both worshipped the 
same God and held the same faith, though their modes 
of worship and their expressions of devotion might be 
different. 

The popes had become capable of setting vast armies 
in motion, and of raising to a white heat the fire of a 
popular sentiment which had already been 

r r * j Schemes and 

kindled. These two conditions were needed motives of 
before the power of Europe could be preci- Gre soryVii. 
pitated on the infidel conquerors of Syria ; and the in- 
ability of the popes to accomplish this end if they were 
not in accord with the prevalent feeling of the people 
is strikingly shown in the history of Gregory VII. Eight 
years after he had helped to slay Harold at Hastings, 
Hildebrand addressed a letter to all who a .d. io 74 . 
loved and cared to defend the Catholic faith, ™ s J r t c u £l 
beseeching them to put aside all other tasks faithful, 
in favour of the great work of chasing the hordes 
of the Seljukian Turks beyond the bounds of the 
Eastern empire. Constantinople, the new city of the 
Seven Hills, was even now threatened by these bar- 
barians ; nor could any say how soon the danger might 
not menace Rome itself. It could not be doubted that 
the faith, the energy, the warlike skill of Christendom 
would sweep away these undisciplined unbelievers; and 
the victory of the faithful would be followed by very solid 
gain to the popes. The price to be paid by the emperor 
for his deliverance from the Turks was his submission as 
a vassal to the see of Rome ; in other words, the pope 
was to become absolute lord both of East and West, and 



22 The Crusades. en. n. 

the claims of the Byzantine patriarch to a co-ordinate 
dignity with the successor of St. Peter should no longer 
be made with impunity. But although the scheme thus 
carefully drawn out was to promote the interests of a 
spiritual power, for the great mass of Latin Christians it 
was purely a political enterprise. The fears and dis- 
tresses of the Eastern emperor could excite no sympathy ; 
the Csesar of Constantinople was not a being who had 
exhibited the image of superhuman love or shed his blood 
for those who had taken delight in torturing him; and the 
excommunication which Hildebrand had imprudently 
hurled against the emperor Nicephorus (Nikephoros) 
III., had left behind it in the East a feeling not favour- 
able to the designs of the Roman pontiff. The letter of 
Hildebrand appealed to no religious associations ; it said 
nothing of abominations committed in the holy places, 
of terrible crimes wrought on the persons of faithful pil- 
grims ; it was silent about the eternal reward which the 
bare act of pilgrimage would win for the believer. It 
was of little use to say in passing that more than 50,000 
warriors longed to rise up under his guidance against the 
enemies of God and reach the sepulchre of their Lord. 
He had not struck the right chord, and Hildebrand failed 
to see the West gird itself for the great conflict with the 
enemies of the faith. 

For a time he may have supposed that the great fire 
was already kindled, when with a fleet of 150 ships and 
a.d. 1081. an army of 30,000 men Robert Guiscard set 
The Nor- sa ^ f rom Brundusium (Brindisi). But the 

mans in ^ ' 

Italy. conqueror who had done so much in Italy 

was to do but little to the east of the Adriatic. While 
his army put forth its whole strength before the walls of 
Dyrrhachium (Durazzo), his fleet under the command of 
his son Bohemond was miserably defeated ; and nothing 
but the wretched jealousy felt by the emperor Alexios for 



i oS i -1095. The Council of Clermont. 23 

his general Paleologos saved the army of Guiscard from 
ruin and turned the threatened disaster into victory. 
When, being compelled to return to Italy, he 

ir _ . , ^ , . . ' A.D. 1082. 

left Bohemond to carry on his enterprise, the 

latter overran Epeiros and had well nigh succeeded in 

reducing the Thessalian Larissa, when he 

n i i t 1 r AD - IO83. 

too was compelled to hasten to Italy for 
reinforcements both in men and money. In his ab- 
sence his deputy, Brienne, the constable of Apulia, 
was constrained to abandon the siege of Kastoria 
and to bind himself not to invade again 

1 ..-.„. A.D. 1085. 

the territories of the Byzantine emperor. 
Not many months later Robert Guiscard gathered an- 
other armament for the conquest of the East. He raised 
the siege of Corfu (Korkyra), and had reached Cefalonia 
(Kephallenia), when his career was cut short by death and 
his scheme for the time seemed utterly brought to nought- 
The war which Hildebrand sought to stir up against the 
Mahomedan powers was not less vigorously preached by 
his successor Victor III., who promised re- 

r . „ , . , . . A.D. 1087. 

mission of sins to all Avho might engage m it ; 
but his words called forth no bands of warriors for the 
recovery of Jerusalem. The fleets of Genoa and Pisa 
swept the African coasts, and gained in the shape of 
booty a harvest which was to fall to the lot of few among 
the myriads who were soon to leave their homes for the 
Holy Land. 

Ten years after the death of Hildebrand three or four 
thousand of the clergy and thirty thousand laymen were 
gathered to meet pope Urban II. at the 

A D. IOQ^- 

council of Piacenza (Placentia). So vast a Council of 
throng could find standing ground in no Piacenza - 
building, and the business of the council was transacted 
in the plain outside the city. The envoys of the Eastern 
emperor, Alexios Comnenos, were there to plead his dis- 



24 The Crusades. ch. it. 

tresses and beseech the strenuous aid of the faithful. 
The policy of checking the progress of the Turks while 
they were still at a good distance from Italy may have 
influenced the more statesmanlike of their hearers ; the 
more vehement and enthusiastic among them were moved 
to tears by the pathetic recital of the Byzantine ambassa- 
dors, and demanded loudly to be led against the enemy. 
But Urban, with his heart more determinately set upon 
the enterprise than any man present, felt that the hour 
for the supreme decision had not yet come. He was in a 
country torn by intestine divisions, where his own claim 
to the papacy was disputed by an antipope whom with 
his adherents it was here his especial business to excom- 
municate. He had to deal with other matters also. 
Some of the clergy still refused to abandon their wives ; 
and the wife of the emperor Henry IV. was present to 
complain of treatment unimaginably monstrous on the 
part of her husband. Both emperor and clergy must be 
condemned, and brought into obedience ; and Urban felt 
that after such business as this it would be well to reserve 
his eloquence for another scene. He therefore dismissed 
the envoys of Alexios with the assurance that when the 
hosts of Western Christendom advanced to the rescue of 
the Holy Sepulchre they would not forget that they had 
work to do near Constantinople. 

From Piacenza Urban made his way across the Alps 
to the realm of the great Charles, whose intercourse with 
the ambassadors of the Caliph Harun-al- 
Reschid may have laid the foundation for the 
myth, expanded into a systematic fiction in the lying 
Chronicle of Turpin, that he had himself smitten down 
the unbelievers under the shadow of the church of Con- 
stantine. On the northern side of the Alps Urban could 
breathe more freely. The sentence of excommunication 
was impending, it is true, over Philip the First, who called 



io95- 



The Council of Clermont. 25 



himself or was called King of France ; but the great- 
grandson of Hugh Capet, powerful though he might be 
within his own dominion of Paris and Orleans, was little 
more than nominal lord of the vast throng of A D 
feudal chiefs who lay beyond its borders. Thecouncil 
From his old home in the great monastery 
of Clugny, Urban set off in the autumn for Clermont 
in the territories of the Count of Auvergne. Before he 
could reach the city, thousands of tents were pitched 
without the walls for those who could find no shelter 
within them; and the eight days during which the council 
held its sessions were spent in regulating the enterprise 
about which the pope had spoken with so much reserve 
at Piacenza, and in prescribing the measures to be taken 
for the safety of those who might remain at home during 
the absence of their natural protectors. 

There was now no more need for hesitation. Popular 
feeling to the north of the Alps was far more deeply 
moved by the woes of the pilgrims and the p;i gr image 
conquests of the infidels than on the southern °f the hermit 
side of the great mountain barriers ; and the Jerusalem. 
wrath of the people had been fanned into an ungovernable 
flame by the preaching of the hermit Peter. This man, 
born at Amiens in Picardy, had forsaken his wife and 
laid aside the sword which he wielded in the service of 
the Counts of Boulogne, to follow the counsel of perfection 
in silence and solitude. Like others, he felt himself 
drawn by an irresistible attraction to the Holy 
Land ; but if his passionate yearnings were 
rewarded by the privilege of offering up his prayers before 
the tomb of the Redeemer, his very heart was stirred 
by the sight of things the mere recital of which had 
awakened his w r rath at a distance. The Sanctuary was 
in the hands of the infidels ; the patriarch was reduced 
practically to the state of a slave, and the pilgrim was 



A.D. 



26 The Crusades. 



CH. II. 



happy who returned from the Holy City without under- 
going humiliations and buffetings scarcely deserved by the 
worst of criminals. The murder of many Christian men, 
the deadly wrongs done to many Christian women, called 
aloud for vengeance, and the hermit made his vow that, 
with the help of God, these things should cease. His 
conversations with the patriarch Simeon brought out only 
confessions of the incapacity of the Greek emperor and 
the weakness of his empire. ' The nations of the West 
shall take up arms in your cause,' said the hermit ; and 
with the patriarchal benediction Peter hastened to obtain 
for the mission which he now saw before him the sanction 
of the man who claimed to be at the head of Eastern and 
Western Christendom alike. 

Before the Roman pontiff Peter poured forth his story 
of the wrongs which called for immediate redress ; but 
a d ia 94 no eloquence was needed to stir the heart of 
The mission Urban. The zeal of the pope was probably 

and preach- . , - , , , 

ingofthe as sincere as that of any others who engaged 
hermit. m t k e entei -p r i se . but it could not fail to 

derive strength from the consciousness that, whatever 
might be the result to the warriors of the cross, his own 
power would rest henceforth on more solid foundations. 
His blessing was therefore eagerly bestowed on the fer- 
vent enthusiast who undertook to go through the length 
and breadth of the land, stirring up the people to the 
great work for the love of God and of their own souls. 
His eloquence may have been as rude as it was ready ; 
but its deficiencies were more than made up by the 
earnestness which gave even to the glance of his eye a 
force more powerful than speech. Dwarfish in stature 
and mean in person, he was yet filled with a fire which 
would not stay, and the horrors which were burnt in upon 
his soul were those which would most surely stir the 
conscience and rouse the wrath of his hearers. His fiery 



io94- 



The Council of Clermont. 27 



appeals carried everything before them. Wherever he 
went, rich and poor, aged and young, the knight and the 
peasant, thronged round the emaciated stranger, who with 
his head and feet bare rode on his ass, carrying a huge 
crucifix. That form, of which they beheld the bleeding 
sign, he had himself seen ; nay, he had received from the 
Saviour a letter which had fallen down from heaven. He 
appealed to every feeling which may stir the heart of 
mankind generally, to every motive which should have 
special power with all faithful Christians. He called upon 
them for the deliverance of the land which was the cradle 
of their faith, for the punishment of the barbarian who had 
dared to defile it, for the rescue of the brethren who were 
the victims of his tyranny. The vehemence which 
choked his own utterance became contagious : his sobs 
and groans called forth the tears and cries of the vast 
crowds who hung upon his words, and who greedily 
devoured the harrowing accounts of the pilgrims whom 
Peter brought forward as witnesses to the truth of his 
picture. Motives more earthly may have mingled with 
his austere call in the minds of some who heard him. Of 
these motives the hermit said nothing : but there is no 
doubt that he made his last and most constraining appeal 
to that notion of mechanical religion which the prophet 
Micah puts into the mouth of Balak the king of Moab. 
The consciences of some amongst his hearers might be 
weighed down by the burden of sins too grievous almost 
for forgiveness. He besought them to remember that 
such fears were altogether misplaced, if only they made 
up their minds to take part in the redemption of the 
Holy Land. If they chose to become the soldiers of the 
cross, their salvation was at once achieved. There was 
no sin, however fearful, which would not be cancelled by 
the mere taking of the vow ; no sinful habits which would 
not be condoned in those who might fall in battle with 



28 The Crusades. ch.il 

the unbelievers. The excitement of the moment, the 
frenzy which, having first unsettled the mind of the her- 
mit, was by him communicated to his hearers, threw, 
we cannot doubt, a specious colouring over a degrading 
morality and a hopelessly corrupting religion ; but as 
little can we doubt that the whole temper which stirred 
up and kept alive the enterprise left behind it a poisoned 
atmosphere which could be cleared only by the storms 
and tempests of the Reformation. 

The preaching of the hermit predetermined the results 

of the council of Clermont ; but Urban and the throng 

of bishops and abbots who were gathered 

the C coundl round him were well aware that something 

of Clermont, re as nee d e d than the enlisting of an 

prohibiting r • ■< 

private wars, army of zealots for distant warfare. With 
fngtheiwe our settled laws and orderly government it 
of God. - s a i most impossible for us to realise the 

condition even of the most advanced states of Christian 
Europe in an age when the power of the king over 
his vassals meant simply that which the strength or the 
weakness of the vassals made it, and when the vassal, if 
he owed allegiance to his lord, was bound by no ties to 
his fellow vassals. The system of feudalism could not 
fail to feed the worst passions of human nature ; and 
the absence of an authority capable of constraining all 
alike involved for those who felt or fancied themselves 
aggrieved an irresistible temptation to take the law into 
their own hands. But the practice of private war thus 
set up would sooner or later assume the form of a trade, 
and in the words of William of Malmesbury things had 
now come to so wretched a pass that feudal chiefs would 
take each other captive on little or no pretence, and 
would set their prisoners free only on the payment of 
an enormous ransom. This military violence of the laity 
was accompanied by corruption on the part of the clergy, 



logs- 



The Council of Clermont. 29 



showing itself in a shameless traffic of benefices and 
dignities which, in brief phrase, fell to the lot of the 
highest bidder. In such a condition of things to drain 
off to distant lands a large proportion of the men who at 
home might do something to check, if not to repress, the 
mischief, would be to leave those who remained behind 
defenceless. Decrees were therefore passed, condemning 
private wars, confirming the Truce of God which sus- 
pended all hostilities during four days of each week, and 
placing the women and the clergy under the protection 
of the Church, which in an especial manner was extended 
to merchants and husbandmen for three years. 

When, the business of the council being ended, Urban 
ascended a lofty scaffold and began his address to the 
people, he spoke to hearers for whom argu- Speech of 
ments were no longer needed, but who were Urban II. 

b ' before the 

well pleased to hear from the chief of Chris- people, 
tendom words which carried with them comfort and 
encouragement. Three forms or versions of this speech 
have been preserved to us ; one in the pages of William of 
Tyre, a second in those of William of Malmesbury, a 
third from a manuscript in the Vatican. It is possible 
that they may represent three different speeches : but the 
substance of all is the same, and we are left in no doubt 
of the general tenor of his words. With some incon- 
sistency he dwelt on the cowardice of the barbarians who 
had contrived to conquer Syria and whose tyranny called 
forth the appeal which he now made to them. The Turk, 
shrinking from close encounters, trusted to his bow and 
arrow ; and the venom of his poisoned shaft, not the bra- 
very of a valiant warrior, inflicted death on the man whom 
it struck. Their fears, he added, were justified, for the 
blood which ran in the veins of men born in countries 
scorched with the heat of the sun was scanty in stream 
and poor in quality as compared with that which coursed 



30 The Crusades. cir. n. 

through the bodies of men belonging to more temperate 
regions. ' In these temperate regions you were born/ he 
pleaded, ' and you have therefore a title to victory which 
your enemies can never acquire. You have prudence, 
you have discipline, you have skill and valour, and you 
will go forth, through the gift of God and the privilege of 
St. Peter, absolved from all your sins. The consciousness 
of this freedom shall soothe the toil of your journey, and 
death will bring to you the benefits of a blessed martyr- 
dom. Sufferings and torments may perhaps await you. 
You may picture them to yourselves as the most exqui- 
site tortures, and the picture may perhaps fall short of 
the agony which you may have to undergo ; but your 
sufferings will redeem your souls at the expense of your 
bodies. Go then on your errand of love, of love for the 
faithful who in the lands overcome by the infidel cannot 
defend themselves, of love which will put out of sight all 
the ti~s that bind you to the spots which you have called 
your homes. Your homes, in truth, they are not. For 
the Christian all the world is exile, and all the world is at 
the same time his country. If you leave a rich patrimony 
here, a better patrimony is promised to you in the Holy 
Land. They who die will enter the mansions of heaven, 
while the living shall behold the sepulchre of their Lord. 
Blessed are they who, taking this vow upon them, shall 
inherit such a recompense : happy they who are led to 
such a conflict, that they may share in such rewards.' 

It was no wonder that words thus striking chords of 
feeling already stretched to intensity should be inter- 
The assent rupted with the passionate cry ' It is the will 
of the of God ! It is the will of God !' which broke 

from the assembled multitude. ' It is, in 
truth, his will,' added the pontiff, 'and let these words be 
your war-cry when you unsheath your swords against the 
enemy. You are soldiers of the cross : wear, then, on 



io95- 



The Council of Clermont. 3 1 



your breasts or on your shoulders the blood-red sign of 
Him who died for the salvation of your souls. Wear it 
as a token that his help will never fail you : wear it as 
the pledge of a vow which can never be recalled.' 

By these words the war now proclaimed against the 
Turks received the name which has become a general 
title for all wars or hostile undertakings car- The cross 
ried on in the name of religion. Thousands a !^ , thevow 

01 the cru- 

hastened at once to put on the badge and so saders. 
to take their place among the ranks of the crusaders. 
The rival claims of the antipope withheld Urban himself 
from taking the pledge to which he was clamorously 
invited ; and worldly prudence alone may have suggested 
the wisdom of standing aloof from a conflict in which 
disaster to a Roman pontiff would certainly be regarded as 
a visible sign of the divine displeasure. Of the clergy, 
the first to assume the cross was Adhemar (Aymer), bishop 
of Puy, and as his reward he received the powers and 
dignity of papal legate. At the head of the laity Raymond, 
count of Toulouse, duke of Narbonne and marquis of 
Provence, promised through his ambassadors to be ready 
by the Feast of the Assumption, August 15, next follow- 
ing the council, the day fixed for the departure of the 
crusading hosts for Constantinople. 

Thus was the die cast for a venture which in the eye 
of a keen-sighted general or a far-seeing statesman should 
have boded little good, but which held out &i ot i ves f 
irresistible attractions for the great mass of the crusa- 
the people, — attractions which continued to 
draw hundreds and thousands still to the unknown and 
mysterious East, when a long series of disasters had 
proved that the journey to Jerusalem was in all likelihood 
a journey to the grave. For the really sincere and devout, 
whose lives had been passed without reproach and who 
could await the future with a clear conscience, there was 



32 The Crusades. 



CH. II. 



the deep sense of binding duty, the yearning to be brought 
nearer whether on earth or in heaven to the Master 
whom they loved. For the feudal chieftain there was the 
fierce pastime of war which formed the main occupation 
and perhaps the only delight of his life, with the wild 
excitement produced by the thought that the indulgence 
of his passions had now become a solemn act of religion. 
There was also the prospect of vast and permanent 
conquest ; and the duke or count who left a fair domain 
behind him might look forward to the chance of winning 
a realm as splendid as that which Robert 
Guiscard and his Normans had won in Apulia 
and Sicily. For the common herd and those whom gross 
living had rendered moral cowards, there was the offer of 
a method by which they might wipe away their guilt 
without changing their character and disposition. Not a 
few might be caught by the philosophy of the abbot 
Guibert, who boldly drew a parallel between the crusades 
and holy orders or monachism. That height of per- 
fection which ecclesiastics might reach in their own 
sphere was now attainable by laymen through an enter- 
prise in which their usual license and habits of life wo Id 
win them the favour of God not less than the most un- 
sparing austerity of the monk or the priest. It was, in 
short, a new mode of salvation, and they who were hurry- 
ing along the broad road to destruction now found that 
the taking of a vow converted it into the narrow and 
rugged path to heaven. Nor was the number few of 
those for whom this convenient arrangement was com- 
bined with some solid temporal advantages. The cross 
on the breast or shoulder set free from the clutches of 
his lord the burgher or the peasant attached to the soil, 
opened the prison doors for malefactors of every kind, 
released the debtor from the obligation of paying interest 
on his debts while he wore the sacred badge, and placed 



cji.il The Council of Clermont. 33 

him beyond the reach of his creditors. Lastly, the 
episode of a crusade might be for the priest a pleasant 
interruption to the dull routine of parochial work, to the 
monk an agreeable change from the wearisome monotony 
of his conventual life. The usurer and the creditor 
might fancy himself to be somewhat hardly treated. 
Yet they were amongst the few to whom the F ; nanc ; a i 
crazy enterprise (crazy not from the impracti- effects of the 

. ... -. . , . , ,. , . crusade. 

cability of its objects, but from the way in 
which these were followed,) brought a solid benefit. The 
unthinking throng might rush off to Palestine without 
making the least preparation for their journey or their 
maintenance, in the blind faith that they would be fed 
and clothed like the fowls of the air or the lilies of the 
field. But for those who could judge more soberly, and 
for those who were not willing to forego their luxuries or 
their pleasures, there was the need of providing a store of 
the precious metals by means of which alone their wishes 
could be gratified. The duke, who had to maintain a 
vast and brilliant retinue, was compelled to mortgage his 
dominions ; and thus for the sum often thousand marks, 
wrung from the lower orders in the English state, William 
Rufus obtained from his brother Robert the government 
of his dukedom for five years, and took care that the prize 
so won should not slip again from his grasp. Nobles 
and knights, setting off on the crusade, all wished to sell 
land, all wished to buy arms and horses. The arms and 
horses therefore became ruinously dear, the lands ridi- 
culously cheap. It is easy to see that the prudent trader, 
the cautious merchant, the landowner whose eye was 
fixed on the main chance, would stand at an enormous 
advantage. 

But if these were gainers, the gains of the pope and the 
sacerdotal army of which he was the chief were greater still. 
If the proclamation of the crusader rendered all private 
D 



34 The Crusades. 



CH. II. 



warfare a treason against Christendom, if it set free even 
Effects of the tne no ^ e from the power of the overlord, 
crusades on and made the latter incapable of summoning 
thepopTand ms vassal to his standard, if the crusader, 
the clergy. as fae soldier of the Church, was released 
from every other obligation, these tremendous changes 
had been wrought wholly by the power of the pope and 
his hierarchy. In placing the dominions of all crusading 
princes under the protection of the Church, the council 
of Clermont may have provided for those chiefs a most 
inadequate defence ; but it placed the pope on a level 
above all earthly princes, and the power which withheld 
Dis nsine t ^ ie arm °*" t ^ ie cre( ^itor from falling upon his 
power of the debtor became a vast dispensing authority, 

the possession of which would have delighted 
the heart and realised the highest longings of Hildebrand. 
Urban did not go to Palestine : but even there he 
was present in the person of his legate Adhemar, and 
thus claimed the guidance of a war sanctified by his 
blessing and undertaken in the cause of the Church. 
The vows of the crusader were taken, again, by many 
who had no present intention of fulfilling them. Sickness, 
or misfortune, or qualms of conscience might lead them 
to assume the fatal sign ; but from that moment until 
they set off on their journey they put themselves in the 
power of the pope, who sometimes used with cruel effect 
the hold thus obtained over emperors and kings. 

Kings, it is true, reaped no small benefit from the 
impulse which drove their vassals to the Holy Sepulchre; 

and the absorption of the smaller into larger 
ofTi^cS- fiefs, and of these again into royal domain, 
break 'up the tended to that extension of the sovereign 
feudal power which ultimately broke up the feudal 

system. But these results were far distant : 
the immediate harvest was gathered by the pope. 



ch.ii. The Council of Clermont. 35 

Thus far he had appeared by his representatives in 
general or local councils ; by these he had interfered in 
the settlement of disputes, through these he increasing 
had negotiated with princes. But the preach- pj^ 1 ^ £* 
ing of the crusades furnished a reason or a clergy. 
pretext for sending his legates into every land. Their 
primary business was to stir up the hearts of the faithful or 
to keep them up to fever heat : but scarcely less important 
was the task of collecting money for the support of the 
crusading armies. On the clergy, whether secular or 
regular, and on the monastic orders, the pope had a 
claim which they dared not to call into question, and the 
subsidies exacted or enjoined for this purpose were paid 
with a real or a feigned cheerfulness. To the laity the 
prayer for voluntary alms assumed practically the form 
of a demand. Refusal would imply lukewarmness 
in the faith, if not positive heresy ; and the imputation 
could not be incurred without peril of temporal and even 
of eternal ruin. Both for the clergy and the laity the 
charge for a special and temporary purpose became a 
permanent tax, the proceeds of which the pope might 
expend on any objects, and in the theory of the time he 
could spend them on none which were not good. 

But for the impost thus laid upon them the clergy had 
a compensation which by the nature of the case could not 
be enjoyed by the laity. If a bishop put on Alienation 
the cross he might lay a burden on his andpiedg- 

1 , , , ,. , , . ing or mort- 

estates, but he could not alienate them, as his gaging of 
right over them ceased with his death ; but lands ; 
in point of fact it was chiefly the prelates and the monas- 
tic houses that became guardians or mortgagees of lands 
belonging to men who had betaken themselves to the 
Tloly Land. The Jews, who amassed immense profits. 
on their loans to needy crusaders, had nothing to do with 
the cultivation of the soil, and in most countries could 



36 The Crusades. 



ch. n. 



not be owners of it. But the Church was everywhere 
ready with its protection and its money ; nor were there 
wanting enthusiasts who, as they fixed the blood-red cross 
on their garment, gave up all their lands and worldly 
goods to the spiritual body whose prayers they regarded 
as a more than sufficient recompense. Even they who 
left the Church merely the guardian of their estates in 
their absence might die in the East ; and if they died 
without heirs the guardians became absolute owners. 
If they came back, toil and disappointment had often 
so worn them down that they took refuge in a cloister 
and handed over to the fraternity whatever of their pro- 
perty might still remain to them. The vast gains thus 
accruing were all over and beyond the accumulations 
amassed from the bequests of ordinary or extraordinary 
penitents on their death-beds or the gifts of enthusiastic 
devotees during their lifetime ; and all the land so gained 
to the Church was withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the 
sovereign who professed to rule the country, and thus 
formed a kingdom within a kingdom, the spiritual domain 
threatening constantly to absorb that of the secular 
monarch. A collision, followed by violent and iniquitous 
spoliation, became inevitable ; and when the time was 
come the great fabric of ecclesiastical wealth was plun- 
dered and demolished. 

In the enterprise to which Latin Christendom thus 
stood committed, the several nations or countries of 
The cru- Europe took very unequal parts ; or, rather, 

natfom!? 1 no na ^ on j as su ch, took any part in it at all ; 

enterprises. and in this fact we have the explanation of 
that want of coherent action, and even decent or average 
generalship, which is commonly seen in national under- 
takings. For the crusade there was no attempt at a 
commissariat, no care for a base of supplies ; and the 
crusading hosts were a collection of individual adven- 



.1095- 



The Council of Clermont. 37 



turers who either went without making any provision for 
their journey or provided for their own needs and those 
of their followers from their own resources. The number 
of these adventurers was naturally determined by the 
political conditions of the country from which they came. 
In Italy the struggle between the pope and the antipope 
went far towards chilling enthusiasm ; and the recruits 
for the crusading army came chiefly from the Normans 
who had followed Robert Guiscard to the sunny southern 
lands. The Spaniards were busied with a crusade nearer 
home, and were already pushing back to the south the 
Mahomedan dominion which had once threat- A D Io8 
ened to pass the barriers of the Pyrenees and Condition of 

, . , r . . . .Lurope in 

carry the Crescent to the shores of the Baltic the time of 
Sea. About ten years before the council of Urban IL ' 
Clermont the Moslem dynasty of Toledo had been ex- 
pelled by Alfonso king of Gallicia: the kingdom of Cor- 
dova had fallen twenty years earlier (1065), and while 
Peter the Hermit was hurrying hither and thither through 
the countries of northern Europe, the Christians of Spain 
were winning victories in Murcia, and the land was ringing 
with the exploits of the dauntless Cid, Ruy Diaz de 
Bivar. By the Germans the summons to the rescue of 
the Holy Sepulchre was received with comparative cold- 
ness : the partisans of emperors, who had been humbled 
to the dust by the predecessors of Urban, if not by him- 
self, were not vehemently eager to obey it. The bishops 
of Salzburg, Passau, and Strasburg, the aged duke Guelf 
of Bavaria, had undertaken the toilsome and perilous 
journey : not one of them saw their homes again, and 
their death in the distant East was not regarded by their 
countrymen as an encouragement to follow their example. 
In England the English were too much weighed down by 
the miseries of the Conquest, the Normans too much 
occupied in strengthening their position, and the king, 



$8 The Crusades. ch. in. 

William the Red, more ready to take advantage of the 
needs of his brother Robert than to incur any risks of 
his own. The great movement came from the lands 
extending from the Scheldt to the Pyrenees. Franks and 
Normans alike made ready with impetuous haste for the 
great adventure ; and tens of thousands, who could not 
wait for the formation of something like a regular army, 
hurried away, under leaders as frantic as themselves, to 
their inevitable doom. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE FIRST CRUSADE. 



Little more than half the time allowed for the gather- 
ing of the crusaders had passed away, when a crowd 
a.d. 1096. of some sixty thousand men and women? 
oTthe'Srst ne i tner caring nor thinking about the means 
rabble of cm- by which their ends could be attained, in- 
Petertfle " sisted that the hermit Peter should lead them 
Waker'the* at once to ^ e no ^y Clt y- Mere charity may 
Penniless. justify the belief that some even amongst these 
may have been folk of decent lives moved by the earnest 
conviction that their going to Jerusalem would do some 
good ; that the vast majority looked upon their vow as a 
license for the commission of any sin, there can be no 
moral doubt ; that they exhibited not a single quality 
needed for the successful prosecution of their enterprise, 
is absolutely certain. With a foolhardiness equal to his 
ignorance, Peter undertook the task, in which he was 
aided by Walter the Penniless, a man with some pre- 
tensions to the soldier-like character. But the utter 
disorder of this motley host made it impossible for 
them to journey long together. At Cologne they 



1096. The Fh'st Crusade. 39 

parted company ; and 15,000 under the penniless Walter 
made their way to the frontiers of Hungary, while Peter 
led onwards a host which swelled gradually on the 
march to about 40,000. 

Another army or horde of perhaps 20,000 marched 
under the guidance of Emico count of Leiningen, a 
third under that of the monk Gotschalk, a Second rab- 
man not notorious for the purity or dis- Jie under 

r J Kmico and 

interestedness of his motives. Behind these Gotschalk. 
came a rabble, it is said, of 200,000 men, women, and 
children, preceded by a goose and a goat, or, as some 
have supposed, by banners on which, as symbols of the 
mysterious faith of Gnostics and Paulicians, the likeness 
of these animals was painted. In this vile horde no pre- 
tence was kept up of order or of decency. Sinning 
freely, it would seem, that grace might abound, they 
plundered and harried the lands through which they 
marched, while 3,000 horsemen, headed by some counts 
and gentlemen, were not too dignified to act as their at- 
tendants and to share their spoil. 

But if they had no scruple in robbing Christians, 
their delight was to prove the reality of their mission as 
soldiers of the cross by plundering, torturing, Blood 
and slaying Jews. The crusade against the secutions of 
Turk was interpreted as a crusade directed e J ew 
not less explicitly against the descendants of those who 
had crucified the Redeemer. The streets of Verdun and 
Treves, and of the great cities on the Rhine, ran red with 
the blood of their victims ; and if some saved their lives 
by pretended conversions, many more cheated their perse- 
cutors by throwing their property and their persons either 
into the rivers or into the consuming fires. Thus 
auspiciously began the mighty enterprise on which pope 
Urban had insisted as the first duty of all Christians ; 
and thus early did the result of his preaching tend to 



40 The Crusades. ch. hi. 

revive the waning power of the emperor, who interposed 
The Tews ^ s authority to this merciless onslaught on a 
taken under peaceable and useful class of his subjects. 

the protec- rT ^ 1 , . , , 

tion of the The Jews were taken under the protection 
empire. Q f t | ie em pire, and for the time the change 

was a real relief. Their posterity found to their cost 
that their guardian might in his turn become their plun- 
derer and tormentor. 

A space of six hundred miles lay between the 
Austrian frontier and Constantinople ; and across this 
March of dreary waste the followers of Walter the 
Hs^fonowers Penniless struggled on, destitute of money, 
through and rousing the hostility of the inhabitants 

anTIS? whom they robbed and ill-used. In Bulgaria 

gana. their misdeeds provoked reprisals which 

threatened their destruction ; and none perhaps would 
have reached Constantinople, if the imperial commander 
at Naissos had not rescued them from their enemies, 
supplied them with food, and guarded them through the 
remainder of their journey. These succours involved 
some costs ; and the costs were paid by the sale of un- 
armed men amongst the pilgrims, and especially of the 
women and children, who were seized to provide the 
necessary funds. Of those who formed the train of the 
hermit Peter, seven thousand only, it is said, reached 
Constantinople. 

Of such a rabble rout the Emperor Alexios needed 
not to be afraid. He had already seen and encountered 
Passage of far larger armies of Normans, Turks, and 

the pilgrims Romans ; and he now extended to this van- 
across the 7 
Bosporos. guard of the hosts of Latin Christendom a 

hospitality which was almost immediately abused. They 

had refused to comply with his request that they should 

quietly await the arrival of their fellow crusaders ; and 

consulting the safety of his people not less than his own, 



1096. The First Crusade. 41 

he induced them to cross the Bosporos, and pitch their 
camp on Asiatic soil, the land which they had come to 
wrest from the unbelievers. 

Alexios wished simply to be rid of their presence : 
they had to deal with an enemy still more crafty and for- 
midable in the Seljukian Sultan David, whose surname 
Kilidje Arslan marked him out as the Sword of the Lion. 
The vagrants whom Peter and Walter had Their utter 
brought thus far on the road to Jerusalem b^KSidjT 
were scattered about the land in search of Arslan. 
food ; and it was no hard task for David to cheat the 
main body with the false tidings that their companions 
had carried the walls of Nice (Nikaia), and were revelling 
in the pleasures and spoils of his capital. The doomed 
horde rushed into the plain which fronts the city ; and a 
vast heap of bones alone remained to tell the story of the 
great catastrophe, when the forces which might more 
legitimately claim the name of an army passed the spot 
where the Seljukian had entrapped and crushed his victims. 
In this wild expedition not less, it is said, than 300,000 
human beings had already paid the penalty of their 
lives. 

Still the first crusade was destined to accomplish 
more than any of the seven or eight crusades which 
followed it ; and this measure of success it Rank and 
achieved probably because none of the great character of 

t-, .... _.. the leaders of 

European sovereigns took part in it. The the first cru- 
Western emperor, Henry IV., the representa- sade - 
tive of Charles the Great, was the enemy of the pope ; 
Philip I. king of France had been excommunicated by 
Urban in the council of Clermont ; the sovereigns of 
Denmark, Scotland, Sweden, and Poland were as yet 
scarcely brought within the community of European 
monarchs ; the Spanish kings had their crusades ready 
made at home ; and we have already seen that the 



42 The Crusades. 



CH. III. 



English William II. was more intent on acquiring duke- 
doms than on running the risk of a blessed martyrdom at 
the gates of Jerusalem. The task of setting up a Latin 
kingdom in Palestine was to be achieved by princes of 
the second order. 

Of these the foremost and the most deservedly illus- 
trious was Godfrey, of Bouillon in the Ardennes, a kinsman 
Godfrey of of the counts of Boulogne, and duke of Lothrin- 
Bouiiion and gen (Lorraine). In the service of the emperor 

his brothers TT TTT1 . .. - TT .. , 

Baldwin and Henry IV., the enemy or the victim of Hilde- 
Eustace. brand, he had been the first to mount the 

walls of Rome and cleave his way into the city ; he might 
hope that his crusading vow would be accepted as an 
atonement for his sacrilege. Speaking the Frank and 
Teutonic dialects with equal ease, he exercised by his 
bravery, his wisdom, and the uprightness of his life, an 
influence which brought to his standard, it is said, not 
less than 80,000 infantry and 10,000 horsemen, together 
with his brothers Baldwin and Eustace count of 
Boulogne. 

Among the most conspicuous of Godfrey's colleagues 
was Hugh count of Vermandois, whose surname the 
Hugh of Great has been ascribed by some to his birth 

Vermandois. as the brother of Philip I. the French king, 
by others merely to his stature, as ' Hugh the long/ 
With him may be placed the Norman duke Robert, whose 
Robert of carelessness had lost him the crown of Eng- 
Normandy. land, and who had now pawned his duchy for 
a pittance scarcely less paltry than that for which Esau 
bartered away his birthright. The picture drawn of 
him is indeed not unlike that of the forefather of the 
Edomite tribes. Careless of the future, open in his 
friendship or his enmity, free from duplicity in himself 
and unsuspicious of treachery in others, charming others 
and injuring himself by his lighthearted cheerfulness and 



1096. The First Crusade. 43 

his lavish generosity, Robert was a man whom the total 
lack of the qualities which marked his iron-hearted father 
brought to a horrible captivity and death in the dungeons 
of Cardiff Castle. 

The number of the great chiefs who led the pilgrims 
from northern Europe is completed with the names of 
Robert count of Flanders, whom his fol- Robert of 
lowers lauded as the Sword and Lance of the f^^ 
Christians, and of Stephen count of Chartres, Chartres. 
Troyes, and Blois, the possessor, if we choose to believe 
the tale, of 365 castles, and as rich in his eloquence as 
in his fortresses. The same arithmetic would have us 
think that the minor chiefs were more numerous than 
the champions whom Agamemnon led to the Trojan 
war ; and the assertion is perhaps as much and as little 
to be credited as the catalogue of Greek warriors in the 
Iliad. 

Foremost, by virtue of his title and office, among the 
leaders of the southern bands, was the papal legate 
Adhemar (Aymer) bishop of Puy — a leader Adhemar 
rather as guiding the counsels of the army bishop of 
than as gathering soldiers under his banner. uy " 
A hundred thousand horse and foot attested, we are told, 
the greatness, the wealth, and the zeal of Raymond of 
Raymond count of Toulouse, lord of Au- loulouse - 
vergne and Languedoc, who had grown old in warfare, 
and won for himself a mingled reputation for wisdom 
and haughtiness, obstinacy and greed. 

Less tinged with the fanatical enthusiasm of his 
comrades, and certainly more cool and deliberate in his 
ambition, Bohemond, son of Robert Guiscard, 
whom we have seen fighting at Dyrrhachium 
and victorious at Larissa (p. 23), looked to the cru- 
sade as a means by which Jie might regain the vast 
regions extending from the Dalmatian coast to the 



44 The Crusades. ch. hi. 

northern shores of the Egean. Nay, if we are to believe 
William of Malmesbury, he urged Urban to set forward the 
enterprise for the very purpose, partly, of thus recovering 
what he was pleased to regard as his inheritance, and in 
part of enabling the pontiff to suppress all opposition in 
Rome. Guiscard had left his Apulian domains to a 
younger son, and Bohemond was resolved, it would seem, 
to add to his principality of Tarentum a kingdom 
which would make him a formidable rival of the Eastern 
emperor. 

Far above his companion Bohemond, rises his cousin 
Tancred, the son of the marquis Odo, surnamed the 
^ Good, and of Emma the sister of Robert 

Tancred. „ . , . , . 

Guiscard ; and his reputation comes not 
from his wealth or the greatness of his following, but 
from the qualities of mind and person which raised him 
indefinitely nearer than his fellows to the standard of the 
'very gentle perfect knight' of Chaucer. In Tancred 
was seen the embodiment of those peculiar sentiments 
and modes of thought which gave birth to the crusades, 
and to which the crusades in their turn imparted mar- 
vellous strength and splendour. 

When in the council of Clermont pope Urban dwelt 
on the cowardice and ignoble fears of the Turks, he 
Cause and probably touched a chord which grated on 
effect of the more generous and enthusiastic amongst 

his hearers, and was in fact speaking as a 
priest when with greater wisdom he should have used the 
language of a general. There can be little doubt that 
the finer spirits of the age were moved by the eager 
desire of rescuing a crowd of helpless Christians from 
conquerors whose might it was impossible for them to 
resist, and who were worthy antagonists even for the 
noblest knights of Latin and Teutonic Christendom. 
The rescue of this feeble multitude could be effected only 



1096. The First Crusade. 45 

at the cost of a great sacrifice, — the sacrifice of houses 
and lands, of luxuries and pleasures : and the conscious- 
ness of large sacrifices, cheerfully made for the weak and 
suffering, is amongst the highest feelings which may be 
awakened in the human heart. Thus in the most noble- 
minded and disinterested of the crusading champions 
there was distinctly a combination of two ideas, seemingly 
discordant, yet working together to produce one definite 
moral result. These were the indignation with which they 
regarded the tyranny exercised over the Christians of the 
East, and the involuntary respect and even admiration 
which they felt for the conquerors as the most redoubtable 
warriors of the age next to the foremost knights of 
Christendom. The former feeling would impel them to 
the most desperate efforts for the recovery of the Holy 
Land and the Holy Sepulchre ; the latter would place 
checks dimly recognised and not always heeded on the 
ferocious warfare with which they would without scruple 
seek to sweep away all meaner or more savage enemies. 
So far as he was actuated by such motives, the crusader 
was cultivating in himself the germs of forbearance and 
toleration which must at once to whatever extent soften 
the horrors of war and which would in the end yield 
more solid and satisfying fruits. In this same direction 
the influence of the Church was felt with constantly in- 
creasing power. It had been her aim to curb, when she 
could not repress, the violence of her children, and to 
establish by a solemn sanction that Truce of God which 
prevented the practice of private war from becoming a 
burden too heavy for the earth to bear. But in the expe- 
dition for the delivery of the Holy Land war itself was 
sanctified ; and the knight, initiated even in past years 
by rites, which, heathen in their origin, had been made 
sacred by the Church, was raised almost to the level of 
the priest and the monk. Henceforth the young aspirant 



46 The Crusades. ch.iii. 

for the knightly dignity and office was treated much as 
the catechumens had been treated in the first 
Christian centuries. He must enter on his 
work with clean thoughts and a pure conscience, and the 
spotless garment of the catechumen, purified by his long 
fast, was reproduced in the white robe which the young 
squire put on after cleansing his body in the bath, while 
the profession of baptism was repeated in the knightly 
vow which (after a special confession of sin followed by 
absolution) pledged the young man to deal justly, truly, 
and generously, defending the oppressed, succouring the 
needy and helpless, and everywhere showing himself the 
unsparing antagonist of all tyrants and evildoers. In an 
especial degree he was to be the champion of women, 
the protector of children ; and he rose from his knees 
before the assembled clergy, dubbed a knight by the 
sword of his godfather in the names of God, of our 
Lady, and of St. Michael, or St. George. The nearest 
to the heart of those who uttered this formula, as to that 
of the young knight, was the name of the Virgin Mother, 
whose image, it would seem, has fascinated multitudes 
without curing them of savage treachery and blood- 
thirsty ferocity. In feudal phrase she was his Lady 
(Notre Dame), as the .crucified Jesus was his Lord (Notre 
Seigneur) ; and the adoring and humble love which he 
bore for her was held to sanctify and to be reflected in 
the devotion which he felt for every noble lady and more 
especially for the one favoured dame who became the 
idol of his heart, a star to be worshipped at a distance, 
if not a queen at whose feet he might throw himself in 
an ecstasy of passion. This being whom he delighted 
to picture to himself as the peerless ideal of womanhood 
might be the wife of another man ; and these extravagant 
fancies produced not unfrequently the most lamentable 
and ruinous results. But the knightly or chivalrous 



IQ 96. The First Crusade. 47 

spirit, thus sometimes led astray, tended nevertheless to 
impose moral checks on rude and savage minds which 
had never felt them before ; and the growth of this spirit 
was ensured chiefly by the crusades. The iniquities 
wrought by the soldiers of the Cross were fearful indeed ; 
but the horrors of the warfare were in some small measure 
softened by the honour which the foremost warriors on 
both sides paid each to the bravery and good faith of the 
other ; and this feeling expressed itself in a word which 
even now has by no means lost its meaning. The quality 
of courtesy so named displayed itself in the 
readiness to give place to another where 
strength and power might have refused all concessions. 
It was closely allied to the Christian qualities of meekness 
and mercy, and any approach to this heavenly temper 
was a gain indeed in a brutalised and ferocious age. The 
highest glory of the crusading knight was to be a mirror 
of courtesy : and this glory is especially associated with 
the name of Tancred. Tancred lived, fought, and con- 
quered : the Rinaldo whom Tasso paints in his epic 
poem on the deliverance of Jerusalem is a being of 
cloudland like the Greek Achilleus, the Trojan Hektor, 
and the Persian Rustam. 

The miserable remnant of 3,000 men who escaped 
from the field of blood before the city of the Seljukian 
Sultan (p. 41), found a refuge in Byzantine AD 6> 
territory about the time when the better ap- August. 

.... . . Departure 

pointed armies of the crusaders were setting c f the main 
off on their eastward journey. The most dis- army , of the 

J J crusaders 

ciplined of these troops set out with a vast under God- 
following from the banks of the Meuse and rey ' 
the Moselle under Godfrey of Bouillon who led them 
safely and without opposition to the Hungarian border. 
Here the armies of Hungary barred the way against the 
advance of a host at whose hands they dreaded a repeti- 



48 The Crusades. 



CH. III. 



tion of the havoc wrought by the lawless bands of Peter 
the Hermit and his self-chosen colleagues. Three weeks 
passed away in vain attempts to get over the difficulty. 
The Hungarian king demanded as a hostage Baldwin 
the brother of the general : the demand was refused, and 
Godfrey put him to shame by surrendering himself. He 
asked only for a free passage and a free market ; but 
although these were granted, it was not in his power to 
prevent some disorder and some depredations as his army 
or horde passed through the country. The mischief 
might have been much worse, had not the Hungarian 
cavalry, acting professedly as a friendly escort but really 
as cautious warders, kept close to the crusading hosts. 

At length they reached the gates of Philippopolis, and 
here Godfrey learnt that Hugh of Vermandois, whose 
coming had been announced to the Greek 
Hifgho7° emperor Alexios by four-and-twenty knights 
Vermandois. m g id en armour, and who styled him- 
self the brother of the king of kings and lord of all the 
Frankish hosts, was a prisoner within the walls of Con- 
stantinople. With Robert of Normandy and Robert of 
Flanders, with Stephen of Chartres and some lesser 
chiefs, Hugh had chosen to make his way through Italy ; 
and the charms of that voluptuous land had a greater 
effect, it seems, in breaking up and corrupting their 
forces than the delights of Capua had in weakening the 
soldiers of Hannibal. With little regard to order the 
chiefs determined to cross the sea as best they might. 
Hugh embarked at Bari ; and if we may believe Anna 
Comnena, the historian and the worshipper of her father 
Alexios, his fleet was broken by a tempest which shattered 
his own ship on the coast between Palos and Dyrrhachium 
(Durazzo), of which John Comnenos, the nephew of the 
emperor, was at this time the governor. The Frank 
chief was here detained until the good pleasure of Alexios 



1096. The First Crusade. 49 

should be known. That wary and cunning prince saw at 
once how much might be made of his prisoner, who was 
by his orders conducted with careful respect and ceremony 
to the capital. Kept here really as a hostage, but welcomed 
to outward seeming as a friend, Hugh was so completelv 
won by the charm of manner which Alexios well knew 
how and when to put on, that, paying him homage and 
declaring himself his man, he promised to do what he 
could to induce others to follow his example. 

From Philippopolis Godfrey sent ambassadors to 
Alexios, demanding the immediate surrender of Hugh. 
The request was refused, and Godfrey re- A D I096 
sumed his march, treating the land through Christmas. 
which he passed as an enemy's country, Godfrey be- 
until by way of Adrianople he at length ScSSS 
appeared before the walls of the capital at n °P le - 
Christmastide, 1096. The fears of Alexios were aroused 
by the sight of a host so vast and so formidable : they 
quickened into terror as he thought of the armies which 
were still on their way under the command of Bohemond 
and Tancred. Of Godfrey, beyond the fact 
of his mission as a crusader, he knew little empero? ' e 
or nothing : but in Bohemond he saw one Alexlos - 
who claimed as his inheritance no small portion of his 
empire. This gathering of myriads, whom a false step 
on his part might convert into open enemies, was the re- 
sult of his own entreaties urged through his envoys be- 
fore Urban II. in the council of Piacenza ; and his mind 
was divided between a feverish anxiety to hurry them on 
to their destination and so to rid himself of their hate- 
ful presence, and the desire to retain a hold not only on 
the crusading chiefs but on any conquests which they 
might make in Syria. 

Hugh was sent back to Godfrey's camp ; but the 
quarrel was patched up, rather than ended. It was easier 



50 The Crusades. 



CH. in. 



to rouse suspicion and jealousy than to restore friend- 
Compact be- ship. But it was of the first importance for 
SfSdtiS" Alexios that he should secure the homage 
crusaders. f the princes already gathered round his 
capital before the arrival of his ancient enemy Bohemond. 
In this he succeeded, and a compact was made by which 
Alexios pledged them his word that he would supply them 
with food and aid them in their eastward march, and would 
protect all pilgrims passing through his dominions. On 
the other hand the crusading chiefs, as already subjects of 
other sovereigns, gave their fealty to the emperor as their 
liege lord only for the time during which they might remain 
within his borders, and undertook to restore to him such 
of their conquests as had been recently wrested from 
the empire. In order to secure this treaty Alexios had 
been compelled to go through the fatigue of interminable 
audiences with the Western warriors and to put up with 
not a little insolence. The effrontery of a crusader, who 
flinging himself on the imperial throne declared that he 
saw no reason for standing while one rustic remained 
seated, was denounced as intolerable rudeness even by 
his companions ; but Robert count of Paris, if indeed it 
was he', closed a brief career not many weeks later, and 
is more conspicuous in modern romance than in the 
pages, of mediaeval historians. 

The spirit of Bohemond was stirred deeply within 
him when on reaching Constantinople he found that his 
Homage of colleagues, instead of remaining indepen- 
the cmsa- ^ t c hj e f s h a d made themselves vassals of 

ders to Alex- ' 

ios. the Byzantine monarch. But Alexios was 

vigorously aided by Robert of Flanders whose friendly 
offices were the result of an alliance made with his father 
eight years before ; and Bohemond soon saw that he 
must in appearance follow the example of his comrades, 
whatever course it might suit him to take hereafter. He 



1096. The First Crusade. 5 1 

became the guest of the emperor, listened with compla- 
cency to his flatteries, accepted a magnificent gift or 
bribe, and accompanied his submission with a request 
for the office of Grand Domestic, or general of the East. 
The emperor put him off with the promise of an indepen- 
dent principality, and turned with more genuine warmth 
to the honest simplicity of Godfrey. This disinterested 
crusader was anxious only to fulfil his vows ; and Alexios 
felt that he was making no sacrifice and entering into 
no inconvenient engagements by adopting him as his 
son. 

The policy and the bribes of Alexios had overcome 
the opposition of Bohemond. He was to experience a 
stouter resistance from Raymond of Tou- 
louse, who, though he had been the first to march of 
enlist, was the last to set out on his crusade. Toulouse to*" 
He should never make another journey, he Constanti- 
said, and he was determined to be well pre- nop e * 
pared. Wishing to avoid, so far as he could, the lines of 
march chosen by the chiefs who had preceded him, he 
took the road through Lombardy. Thus far his march 
was easily accomplished : but things wore a different look 
when he reached the savage mountains and desolate 
valleys of Dalmatia and Slavonia. The people had driven 
their cattle (and their cattle formed practically their whole 
property) into inaccessible glens: and instead of plunder- 
ing others the crusaders found themselves harassed and 
their stragglers cut off by thieves and murderers. Ray- 
mond retaliated by cutting off the hands and noses of 
all who were taken prisoners and putting out their eyes ; 
and the wrath of the natives was roused to desperate re- 
sistance. At Scodra he entered into some sort of agree- 
ment with the Servian chief Bodin ; but the country 
could yield little for the support of this vast army, which 
was compelled to struggle onwards under dire difficulties. 



5 2 The Crusades. ch. hi. 

It is astonishing to hear that Raymond could still speak 
of himself as the leader of a hundred thousand warriors, 
when he refused flatly to do homage to the Greek emperor. 

The count of Toulouse scarcely regarded himself as 
the vassal even of the French king. He was ready, he 
Refusal of sa '^> to ^ e ^ ie fri en d of Alexios on equal 
Raymond to terms ; but he would not declare himself to 
be his man. On this point he was immov- 
able, although Bohemond tried the effect of a threat, which 
was never forgiven, that if the quarrel came to blows, he 
should be found on the side of the emperor. But Alexios 
soon saw that in Raymond he had to deal with an enthu- 
siast as sincere and persistent as Godfrey. He took his 
measures accordingly, and winning the heart of the old 
warrior, although he failed to compel his obedience, he 
confessed to him his dislike of the rude and noisy habits 
of the Franks and his deep-seated fears of Bohemond. 
The admiration of Anna Comnena was as great as the 
esteem professed for him by her father. Raymond in 
her fervent language shone among the barbarians as the 
sun among the stars of heaven. 

While Alexios was thus busied in dealing with Godfrey 
and Raymond, Bohemond and Tancred, he was not less 
Conduct of anxiously occupied with the task of sending 
Alexios to the across the Bosporos the swarms which might 
soon become an army of devouring locusts 
round his own capital. It was easier to give them a wel- 
come than to get rid of them : and more than two months 
a.d. io 97 . had passed since Christmas, when the followers 
March. Q f Godfrey found themselves on the soil of 

Asia. It was well to place even a narrow strait of sea 
between himself and these dangerous friends, who had 
threatened him at first with all the horrors of savage war. 
The rumour had got abroad that Alexios meant to hem 
them in anion? marshes, and leave them there to starve : 



io97- The First Crusade. 53 

and an assault of the crusaders on the suburbs showed 
the emperor what he might expect, if these suspicions 
were not quieted. Probably he had not intended to 
entrap them to their death : but he had felt less scruple 
in submitting them to cheatings with debased coin and 
to extortions which carried with them no sense of novelty 
for his own people. Even these he found it politic to 
abandon, and so zealously did he employ an opposite 
method that for the time the crusaders seemed to have 
become his mercenaries. 

Godfrey's men had no sooner been landed on the 
eastern side of the Bosporos, than all the vessels which 
had transported them were brought back to D 

. . _,_.. _ G Passage of 

the western shore. With great astuteness, the crusa- 
and at the cost of large gifts, Alexios in like &?££?** 
manner freed the neighbourhood of his capital v° TOS - 
from the invading multitudes. As fast as they came, they 
were hurried across, and the emperor breathed more freely 
when, on the feast of Pentecost, not a single Latin pilgrim 
remained on the European shore. 

The danger of conflict had throughout been imminent ; 
and the danger arose, not so much from the fact that the 
crusaders were armed men, marching through 
the country of professed allies, but from the 25S3& 
thorough antagonism between Greeks and between the 

T . . crusaders 

Latins in modes of thought and habits of life, and the 
in the first notions of civilisation, law, and Greeks ' 
duty. For the Greeks feudalism was a thing of the remote 
past ; in other words, was a thing unknown. To get at 
a state resembling that of Western Europe they would 
have had to go back for nearly twenty centuries— to the 
days of Solon and of the Thessalian and Theban nobility, 
who were among the most efficient allies of Xerxes. 
For the crusading armies or rather for their chiefs (of 
the common herd there was no need to take any account), 



54 The Crusades. 



CH. III. 



nothing was so hateful as a central authority which pressed 
on all orders in the state alike : nothing was so precious 
as local tyranny and the right of private war, which 
respected neither person nor property. For the subjects 
of the Eastern empire the protection of person and pro- 
perty was everything, and in order to secure this they 
were willing to put up with a large amount of oppression 
and of corruption in their governors. In a sense not so 
high perhaps as that which the words bore in the days of 
Herodotos, law was still their king ; and of public law the 
Contrast be- Latins could scarcely be said to have any 
Greek Sid conception. Nor must we forget the vast 
Latin clergy, gulf which separated the Eastern from the 
Western clergy. The latter were now becoming well 
broken into the yoke of celibacy which had been finally 
thrust upon them by Damiani and Hildebrand ; for the 
former marriage was a condition for the very reception of 
their orders. The Latin clergy had by this change been con- 
verted into a close order or caste, which looked up to the 
Roman pontiff as their head and hated the thought of 
allegiance to any temporal ruler. This empire within an 
empire was an idea which had not dawned on the Greek 
or the Eastern mind ; and the clergy of the West despised 
their brethren of the East for their cowardly submission 
to the secular arm. These, in their turn, shrunk with 
horror from the sight of bishops, priests, and monks 
riding with blood-stained weapons over fields of battle, 
and exhibiting at other times an ignorance equal to their 
ferocity. Harmony between nations and races under such 
conditions is as hopeless as the voluntary mingling of oil 
and water ; and the result of contact was an exasperation 
of the suspicion, jealousy, and hatred which the one side 
felt instinctively for the supposed treachery, lying, and 
violence of the other. 

Thus was gathered on the eastern shores of the 



io97. 



The First Crusade. 5 5 



Hellespont and the Bosporos a host, we may well believe 
more vast than that which Xerxes drove Numbers of 
before him for the invasion of Europe, and thecrusa- 
leaving behind it in utter insignificance the 
scanty force with which Alexander attempted and 
achieved the conquest of Asia. When tribes or a 
nation pour out their whole population, men, women, and 
children alike, there is practically no limit to the numbers 
which may be set in motion ; nor is it any tax on our 
credulity to believe that a hundred thousand horsemen, 
fully armed in the light coats of mail worn during the 
first crusading age, were marshalled on the Bithynian 
plains, even if we put aside as an absurd exaggera- 
tion the notion of the chaplain of Count Baldwin, that 
the whole body of the crusaders amounted to not less 
than six millions. 

Their strength and valour were soon to be tested. 
They were now face to face with the Turks on whose 
cowardice Urban II. had enlarged with so j U ne. 
much complacency before the council of fon g of a x ice 
Clermont. The Sultan David, or Kilidje (Nikaia). 
Arslan (p. 41), placed his family and treasures in his 
capital city of Nice (Nikaia), and retreated with 50,000 
horsemen to the mountains, whence he swooped down 
from time to time on the outposts of the Christians. By 
these his city was formally invested ; and for seven weeks 
it was assailed to little purpose by the old instruments 
of Roman warfare, while some of the besiegers shot their 
weapons from the hill on which were mouldering the 
bones of the fanatic followers of Peter. It was protected 
to the west by the Askanian lake, and so long as the 
Turks had command of this lake they felt themselves 
safe. But Alexios sent thither on sledges a large number 
of boats, and the city, subjected to a double blockade, 
submitted to the emperor, who was in no way anxious to 



56 The Crusades. ch. in. 

see the crusaders masters of the place. The crusaders 
were making ready for the last assault, when they saw the 
imperial banner floating on the walls. Their disappoint- 
ment at the escape of the miscreants, or unbelievers, for 
so they delighted to speak of them, was vented in threats 
which seemed to bode a renewal of the old troubles : but 
Alexios, with gifts which added force to his words, pro- 
fessed that his only desire now, as it had been, was to 
forward them safely on their journey. Nor had they to 
go many stages before they found themselves again con- 
j ul fronted with their adversary. The conflict 

Battle of took place near the Phrygian Dorylaion, and 

seemed at first to portend dire defeat to the 
crusaders. More than once the issue of the day seemed 
to be turned by the indomitable personal bravery of the 
Norman Robert, of Tancred, and of Bohemond; and 
when even those seemed likely to be borne down, they 
received timely succours from Godfrey, and Hugh of Ver- 
mandois, from bishop Adhemar of Puyand from Raymond 
count of Toulouse. Still the Turks held out, and it seemed 
likely that they would long hold out, when the appearance 
of the last division of Raymond's army filled them with 
the fear that a new host was upon them. 

The crusaders had won a considerable victory. Three 
thousand knights belonging to the enemy had been slain, 
March to and Kilidje Arslan was hurrying away to 

the g pLidian enlist the services of his kinsmen. Mean- 
Antioch. while the Latin hosts were sweeping onwards, 

passing Cogni (Ikonion, Iconium), Erekli (Herakleia), and 
the Pisidian Antioch. Their dangers were great ; their 
sufferings terrible. The son of Kilidje Arslan had hurried 
on before them with ten thousand horsemen, and declared 
before the gates of each city that they came as conquerors, 
not as fugitives. They had ravaged the lands as they 
came along ; in the town they sacked the churches, 



io 9 7. 



The First Crusade. 57 



plundered the houses, emptied the granaries ; and the 
crusaders who followed them had to journey over a naked 
soil under the burning Phrygian sun. Hundreds died from 
the heat : and dogs or goats took the place of the baggage 
horses which had perished. At length Tancred with his 
troop found himself before Tarsus, the birthplace and the 
home of that single-hearted apostle who long ago had 
preached a gospel strangely unlike the creed of the 
crusaders. Following rapidly behind him, Q uar relbe- 
Baldwin saw with keen jealousy the banner tween Baid- 
of the Italian chief floating on its towers, and Tancred at 
insisted on taking the precedence. Tancred Tarsus - 
pleaded the choice of the people and his own promise to 
protect them ; but the intrigues of Baldwin changed their 
humour, and the rejection of Tancred by the men of Tar- 
sus was followed by an attempt at private war between 
Tancred and Baldwin, in which the troops of Tancred 
were overborne. So early was the first harvest of mur- 
derous discord reaped among the holy warriors of the 
cross. It was ruin, however, to stay where they were ; 
and the main army again began its march, to undergo 
once more the old monotony of hardship and peril. 

A very small force would have sufficed to disorganise 
and rout them as they clambered over the defiles of 
Mount Taurus; nor could Raymond, re- Conquest of 
covering from a terrible illness, or Godfrey, Edessa by 
suffering from wounds inflicted by a bear, 
have done much to help them. But for the present 
their enemies were dismayed ; and Baldwin, brother of 
Godfrey, hastened with eagerness to obey a summons 
which besought him to aid the Greek or Armenian tyrant 
of Edessa. As Alexios had done to his brother, so this 
chief welcomed Baldwin as his son ; but Baldwin, having 
once entered into the city, cared nothing for the means 
which had brought him thither, and the death of his 



58 The Crusades. ch.iii. 

adoptive father was followed by the establishment at 
Edessa of a Latin principality which lasted for fifty-four, 
or, as some have thought, forty-seven years. Baldwin 
had anticipated the unconditional surrender of Samosata; 
but the Turkish governor had some of the Edessenes in 
his power, and he refused to give up the city except on 
the payment of ten thousand gold pieces. The Turk 
shortly afterwards fell into Baldwin's hands, and was put 
to death. 

Meanwhile the main army of the crusaders was ad- 
vancing towards the Syrian capital, that ancient and 
Arrival of luxurious city whose fame had gone over the 
the crusa- whole Roman world for its magnificence, its un- 
the Syrian bounded wealth, its soft delights, and its unholy 
Antioch. pleasures. The days of its greatest splendour 

had passed away. Its walls were partially in ruins ; its 
buildings were in some parts crumbling away or had 
already fallen ; but against assailants utterly ignorant 
and awkward in all that relates to the blockade of cities 
it was still a formidable position. Nor could they invest 
it until they had passed the iron bridge (so called from 
its iron-plated gates) of nine stone arches, which spanned 
the stream of the Ifrin at a distance of nine miles from the 
city. This bridge was carried by the impetuous charge of 
Robert of Normandy, aided by the more steady efforts of 
Godfrey; and in the language of an age which delighted 
a.d. 1097. in round numbers, a hundred thousand war- 
° ct * riors hurried across to seize the splendid prize 

which now seemed almost within their grasp. 

But the city was in the hands of men who had been 
long accustomed to despise the Greeks, and who had not 
Siege of An- y et learnt to respect the valour of the Latins. 
tioch. Preparing himself for a resolute defence, the 

Seljukian governor Baghasian had sent away, as useless, 
if not mischievous, most of the Christians within the 



1097- 



The First Crusade. 59 



town ; and the crusading chiefs had begun to discuss the 
prudence of postponing all operations till the spring, when 
Raymond of Toulouse with some other chiefs insisted 
that delay would imply fear, and that the imputation of 
cowardice would ensure the paralysis of their enterprise. 
The city was therefore at once invested, so far as the 
forces of the crusaders could suffice to encircle it ; and a 
siege began which in the eyes of the military historian 
must be absolutely without interest, and of which the 
issue was decided by paroxysms of fanatical vehemence 
on the one side, and by lack not of bravery but of general- 
ship on the other. Of the eastern and northern walls the 
blockade was Complete ; of the west it was partial ; and 
the failure to invest a portion of the western wall, 
with two out of the five gates of the city, left the move- 
ments of the Turks in this direction free. 

But the besiegers were in no hurry to begin the work 
of death. The wealth of the harvest and the vintage 
spread before them its irresistible temptations, Foll f t h e 
and the herds feeding in the rich pastures besiegers. 
seemed to promise an endless feast. The cattle, the corn, 
and the wine were alike wasted with besotted folly, while 
the Turks within the walls received tidings, it is said, 
of all that passed in the crusading camp from some 
Greek and Armenian Christians to whom they allowed 
free egress and ingress. Of this knowledge they availed 
themselves in planning the sallies by which they caused 
great distress to the besiegers, whose clumsy engines and 
devices seemed to produce no result beyond the waste of 
time, and who felt perhaps that they had done something 
when they blocked up the gate of the bridge with huge 
stones dug from the neighbouring quarries. 

Three months passed away ; and the crusaders found 
themselves not conquerors but in desperate straits from 
famine. The winter rains had turned the land round 



Co The Crusades. 



CH. III. 



their camp into a swamp, and lack of food left them 
Famine in more and more unable to resist the pestilential 
the crusa- diseases which were rapidly thinning their 
mg camp. numDers# a foraging expedition under Bohe- 
mond and Tancred filled the camp with food : it was 
again recklessly wasted. The second famine scared 
away Tatikios, the lieutenant of the Greek emperor 
Alexios ; but the crusading chiefs were perhaps still more 
disgusted by the desertion of William of Melun, called 
the Carpenter from the sledge-hammer blows which he 
dealt out in battle. Hunger obtained a victory even over 
the hermit Peter, who was stealing away with William of 
Melun, when he with his companion was caught by 
Tancred and brought back to the tent of Bohemond. 

For a moment the look of things was changed by the 
arrival of ambassadors from Egypt. To the Fatimite 
Arrival of caliph of that country the progress of the 
envoys from crusading arms had thus far brought with it 

the Fatimite . ..' .. . r _. , .,. 

sultan of but little dissatisfaction. The humiliation 
Egypt- f t h e Seljukian Turks could not fail to 

bring gain to himself, if the flood of Latin conquests 
could be checked and turned back in time. His generals 
besieged Jerusalem and Tyre ; and when the Fatimite 
once more ruled in Palestine, his envoys hastened to the 
crusaders' camp to announce the deliverance of the 
Holy Land from its oppressors, to assure to all unarmed 
and peaceable pilgrims a month's unmolested sojourn in 
Jerusalem, and to promise them his aid during their 
march, on condition that they should acknowledge his 
supremacy within the limits of his Syrian empire. 

The arguments and threats of the caliph were alike 
Their terms thrown away. The Latin chiefs disclaimed 
th J e e C rusa by a ^ i nterest m the feuds and quarrels of rival 
ders. sultans and in the fortunes of Mahomedan 

sects. God Himself had destined Jerusalem for the 



io97 



The First Crusade. 6 1 



and if any held it who were not Christians, 
these were usurpers whose resistance must be punished 
by their expulsion or their death. The envoys departed 
not encouraged by this answer, and still more perplexed 
by the appearance of plenty and by the magnificence of a 
camp in which they had expected to see a terrible spec- 
tacle of disorder and misery. 

The resolute persistence of the besiegers convinced 
Baghasian of the need of reinforcements. These were 
hastening to him from Caesarea, Aleppo, and Fierce war- 
other places, when they were cut off by Bohe- ^chHs- 6 " 
mond and Raymond who sent a multitude of tians and the 
heads to the envoys of the Fatimite caliph, 
and discharged many hundreds from their engines into 
the city of Antioch. The Turks had their opportunity 
for reprisals when the arrival of some Pisan and Genoese 
ships at the mouth of the Orontes drew off A D 8 
the greater part of the besieging army. The March, 
crusaders were returning with provisions and arms, when 
their enemies started upon them from an ambuscade. 
The battle was fierce : but the defeat of Raymond which 
threatened dire disaster was changed into victory on the 
arrival of Godfrey and the Norman Robert, whose exploits 
equalled or surpassed, if we are to believe the story, even 
those of Arthur, Lancelot, or Tristram. Hundreds, if not 
thousands, of Turks fell. Their bodies were buried by their 
comrades in the cemetery without the walls : the Chris- 
tians dug them up, severed the heads from the trunks, and 
paraded the ghastly trophies on their pikes, not forgetting 
to send a goodly number to the Egyptian caliph, by way 
of showing how his Seljukian friends or enemies had fared. 
The picture is disgusting ; but if we shut our eyes to these 
loathsome details, the truth of the history is gone. We 
are dealing with the wars of savages, and it is right that 
we should know this. 



62 The Crusades. 



CH. III. 



The next scene exhibits Godfrey and Bohemond in 
fierce quarrel about a splendid tent, which, being intended 
as a gift for the former, had been seized by an Armenian 
chief and sent to the latter. But there was now more 
serious business on hand. Rumour spoke of the near 
Plan of Bo- approach of a Persian army, and the besieged 

IhTreducdon under the P lea of wishin g to arrange 
of Antioch terms of capitulation obtained a truce which 
they sought probably only for the sake of gaining time. 
The days passed by, but no offers were made ; and their 
disposition was shown by seizing a crusading knight in 
the groves near the city, and tearing his body in pieces. 
The Latins returned with increased fury to the siege : but 
the defence, although more feeble, was still protracted, 
and Bohemond began to feel not only that fraud might 
succeed where force had failed, but that from fraud he 
might reap not safety merely but wealth and greatness. 
His plans were laid with a renegade Christian named 
Phirouz (high in the favour of the governor), with whom 
he had come into contact either during the truce or in 
some other way. By splendid promises he ensured the 
zealous aid of his new ally, and then came forward in 
the council with the assurance that he could place the 
city in their hands, but that he could do this only on 
condition that he should rule in Antioch as Baldwin 
ruled in Edessa. His claim was angrily opposed by the 
Provencal Raymond : but this opposition was overruled, 
and it was resolved that the plan should be carried out 
at once. 

There was need for so doing. Rumours spread within 
the city that some attempt was to be made to betray 
j une the place to the besiegers, and hints or open 

Betrayal of accusations pointed out Phirouz as the trai- 
Bohemond. tor. Like other traitors, the renegade thought 
it best to anticipate the charge by urging that the guards 



I0 98. The First Crusade. 63 

of the towers should on the very next day be changed. His 
proposal was received as indubitable proof of his inno- 
cence and his faithfulness ; but he had made up his 
mind that Antioch should fall that night, and that night 
by means of a rope ladder Bohemond with about sixty 
followers (the ropes broke before more could ascend) 
climbed up the wall. Seizing ten towers of which all the 
guards were killed, they opened a gate, and the Christian 
host rushed in. The banner of Bohemond rose on one of 
the towers ; the trumpets sounded for the onset, and a 
carnage began in which at first the assailants took no 
heed to distinguish between the Christian and the Turk. 
In the awful confusion of the moment some of the be- 
sieged made their way to the citadel, and there shut 
themselves in, ready to resist to the death. Of the rest 
few escaped : ten thousand, it is said, were massacred. 
Baghasian with some friends passed out beyond the 
besiegers' lines ; but fainting from loss of blood he fell 
from his horse, and his companions hurried on. A Syrian 
Christian heard his groans, and striking off his head, 
carried the prize to the camp of the conquerors. Phirouz 
lived to be a second time a renegade, and to close his 
career as a thief. 

The victory was for the crusaders a change from 
famine to abundance ; and their feasting was accom- 
panied by the wildest riot and the most filthy Arrival of 
debauchery. But if heedless waste may have J n e de ^| si J ns 
been one of the most venial of their sins, boga. 
it was the greatest of their blunders. The reports which 
spoke of the approach of the Persians were not false. 
The Turks within the citadel suddenly found that they 
were rather besiegers than besieged, and that the Chris- 
tians were hemmed in by the myriads of Kerboga 
prince of Mosul and the warriors of Kilidje Arslan. 
The old horrors of famine were now repeated, but in 



64 The Crusades. 



CH. III. 



greater intensity ; and the doom of the Latin host seemed 
to be sealed. 

Stephen count of Chartres had deserted his com- 
panions before the fall of the city ; others now followed 
_ . .his example, and with him set out on their 

Desertion of L ' 

Stephen of return to Europe. In Phrygia Stephen en- 
artres * countered the emperor Alexios who was march- 
ing to the aid of the crusaders, not only with a Greek 
army, but with a force of well appointed pilgrims who had 
reached Constantinople after the departure of Godfrey 
and his fellows. The story told by Stephen drove out 
of his head every thought except that of his own safety. 
The order for retreat was given ; and the pilgrim war- 
riors not less than the Greeks were compelled to turn 
their faces westwards. In vain Guy, a brother of Bohe- 
mond, pleaded his duty and his vow. His words were 
unheeded ; and his indignation wrung from him the 
desperate assertion that if the Divine Being were omni- 
potent, He would not suffer such things to be done. 

In Antioch the crusading soldiers were fast sinking 
into utter despair. Discipline had well nigh come to an 
Desperate end, and so obstinate was their refusal to 
cru^aderVirf ^ear arms an Y longer, that Bohemond re- 
Antioch. solved to burn them out of their quarters. 

These were consumed by the flames, which spread so 
rapidly as to fill him with fear that he had destroyed not 
only their dwellings but his whole principality. His experi- 
ment brought the men back to their duty : but so de- 
spondingly was their work done that but for some signal 
succour the end, it was manifest, must soon come. In a 
credulous age such succour at the darkest hour, if ob- 
tained at all, will generally be obtained through miracle. 
A Lombard priest came forward, to whom St. Ambrose of 
Milan had declared in a vision that the third year of the 
crusade should see the conquest of Jerusalem ; another 



1098. The First Crusade. 65 

had seen the Saviour Himself, attended by his Virgin- 
Mother and the Prince of the Apostles, had heard from 
his lips a stern rebuke of the crusaders for yielding to 
the seductions of pagan women (as if the profession of 
Christianity altered the colour and the guilt of a vice), and 
lastly had received the distinct assurance that in five 
days they should have the help which they needed. The 
hopes of the crusaders were roused ; with hope came a 
return of vigorous energy ; and Peter Barthelemy, chap- 
lain to Raymond of Toulouse, seized the opportunity for 
recounting a vision which was to be something more than 
a dream. To him St. Andrew had revealed ^. A - 

1 he disco- 

the fact that in the church of St. Peter lay very of the 
hidden the steel head of the spear which had ° y ance ' 
pierced the side of the Redeemer as He hung upon the 
cross ; and that Holy Lance should win them victory 
over all their enemies as surely as the spear which im- 
parted irresistible power to the Knight of the Sangreal. 
After two days of special devotion they were to search 
for the long-lost weapon : on the third day the workmen 
began to dig ; but until the sun had set they toiled in 
vain. The darkness of night made it easier for the 
chaplain to play the part which Sir Walter Scott, in the 
'Antiquary,' assigns to Herman Dousterswivel in the ruins 
of St. Ruth. Barefooted and with a single garment the 
priest went down into the pit. For a time the strokes of 
his spade were heard, and then the sacred relic was 
found, carefully wrapped in a veil of silk and gold. The 
priest proclaimed his discovery ; the people rushed into 
the church ; and from the church throughout the city 
spread the flame of a fierce enthusiasm. 

Nine or ten months later Peter Barthelemy paid 
the penalty of his life for his fraud or his Fate of the 
superstition. A bribe taken by his master discoverer. 
Raymond brought that chief into ill odour with his 
F 



66 The Crusades. 



CH. I) 



comrades, and let loose against his chaplain the 
tongue of Arnold, the chaplain of Bohemond. Ray- 
mond had traded on fresh visions of his clerk ; 
and Arnold boldly attacked him in his citadel by 
denying the genuineness of the Holy Lance. Peter ap- 
pealed to the ordeal of fire. He passed through the 
flames, as it seemed, unhurt. The bystanders pressed to 
feel his flesh, and were vehement in their rejoicings at the 
result which vindicated his integrity. He had really re- 
ceived fatal injuries. Twelve days afterwards he died, and 
Raymond suffered greatly in his dignity and his influence. 
The infidel was doomed ; but the crusaders resolved 
to give him one chance of escape. Peter the Hermit was 
Battle of sent as their envoy to Kerboga to offer the 
Antioch. alternative of departure from a land which 

St. Peter had bestowed on the faithful, or of baptism 
which should leave him master of the city and territory 
of Antioch. The reply was short and decisive. The 
Turk would not embrace an idolatry which he hated and 
despised, nor would he give up soil which belonged to 
him by right of conquest. The report of the hermit 
a.d. 1098. raised the spirit of the crusaders to fever 
June 28. heat . and on the fcast of St> Peter and St. 

Paul they marched out in twelve divisions, in remem- 
brance of the mission of the twelve apostles, while Ray- 
mond of Toulouse remained to prevent the escape of the 
Turks shut up in the citadel. The Holy Lance was borne 
by the papal legate, Adhemar bishop of Puy ; and the 
morning air laden with the perfume of roses was now re- 
garded as a sign assuring them of the divine favour. 
They were prepared to see good omens in everything ; 
and they went in full confidence that departed saints 
would, as they had been told, take part in the battle and 
smite down the infidel. The fight (one of brute force on 
the Christian side, of some little skil) as well as strength 



I0 98. The First Crusade. 6j 

on the other) had gone on for some time when such help 
seemed to become needful. Tancred had hurried to the 
aid of Bohemond who was grievously pressed by Kilidje 
Arslan ; and Kerboga was bearing heavily on Godfrey 
and Hugh of Vermandois, when, clothed in white armour 
and riding on white horses, some human forms were seen 
on the neighbouring heights. ' The saints are coming to 
your aid/ shouted the bishop of Puy, and the people saw 
in these radiant strangers the martyrs St. George, St. 
Maurice, and St. Theodore. Without awaiting their 
nearer approach the crusaders turned on the enemy with 
a force and fury which were now irresistible. Their 
cavalry could do little. Two hundred horses only re- 
mained of the sixty thousand which had filled the plain a 
few months before. But the hedge of spears advanced 
like a wall of iron, and the Turks gave way, Defeat of 
broke, and fled. It was rout, not retreat ; Kerb °s a - 
and with the crusaders victory was followed by the 
massacre of men, women, and children. The garrison 
in the citadel at once surrendered. Some declared them- 
selves Christians and were baptized ; those who refused 
to abandon Islam were taken to the nearest Mahomedan 
territory. The city was the prize of Bohe- Amioch 
mond ; and in his keeping it remained, ™ ad , e a ? nn " 

7 x- o j cipahty for 

although Raymond of Toulouse had made an Bohemond. 
effort to seize it by hoisting his banner on the walls. The 
work of pillage being ended, the churches were cleansed 
and repaired, and their altars blazed with golden spoils 
taken from the infidel. The Greek patriarch was again 
seated on his throne : but he held his office at the good 
pleasure of the Latins, and two years later he was made 
to give place to Bernard, a chaplain of the bishop of Puy. 
Ten months had passed away after the conquest of 
Antioch when the main body of the crusading army set 
out on its march to Jerusalem. They had wished to 



68 The Crusades. 



CH. III. 



depart at once, but their chiefs dreaded to encounter 
Mission of waterless wastes at the end of a wSyrian 
Hugh of summer, and for the present they were con- 

to Constants tent to send Hugh of Vermandois and Bald- 
nopie. w j n f Hainault as envoys to the Greek 

emperor, to reproach him with his remissness or his want 
of faith. But the miseries endured by Christians and 
Turks were the pleasantest tidings in the ears of Alexios, 
for in the weakening of both lay his own strength ; and he 
saw with satisfaction the departure of Hugh, not for 
Antioch, but for Europe, whither Stephen of Chartres had 
preceded him. 

Winter came ; but the chiefs still lingered at An- 
tioch. Some were occupied in expeditions against neigh- 
Death o'f bouring cities : but a more pressing care 
Adhemar was fa e plague which punished the foulness 
Puy. and disorder of the pilgrims. A band of 
1,500 Germans, recently landed in strong health and full 
equipments, were all, it is said, cut off; and among the 
victims the most lamented perhaps was the papal legate 
Adhemar. A feeling of discouragement was again 
spreading through the army generally. The chiefs vainly 
entreated the pope to visit the city where the disciples of 
St. Peter first received the Christian name ; the people 
were disheartened by the animosities and the selfish or 
crooked policy of their chiefs. Raymond still hankered 
after the principality of Antioch and insisted that Bohe- 
mond and his people, like the men of the three trans-jor- 
danic tribes in the days of Joshua, should share in the last 
great enterprise of the crusade. More disgraceful than 
c . , these feuds were the scenes witnessed dur- 

Siege and 

capture of ing the siege and after the conquest of Marra. 
Heedlessness and waste soon brought the as- 
sailants to devour the flesh of dogs and of human beings. 
The bodies of Turks were torn from their sepulchres, 



I0 98. The First Crusade. 69 

ripped up for the gold which they were supposed to have 
swallowed, and the fragments cooked and eaten. Of the 
besieged many slew themselves to avoid falling into the 
hands of the Christians ; to some Bohemond, tempted 
by a large bribe, gave an assurance of safety. When the 
massacre had begun, he ordered these to be brought for- 
ward. The weak and old he slaughtered ; the rest he 
sent to the slave-markets of Antioch. 

A weak attempt made by Alexios to detain the cru- 
saders only spurred them to more vigorous efforts. They 
had already left Antioch, and Laodicea a.d. 1099. 
was in their hands, when he desired them March of the 
to await his coming in June. The chiefs, crusaders 

1 • ii ^ -i • fromAnti- 

remembermg the departure of Tatikios och. 
(p. 60) with his Byzantine troops for Cyprus, retorted 
that he had broken his compact, and had therefore no 
further claims on their obedience. Hastening on their 
way, they crossed the plain of Berytos (Beyrout), over- 
looked by the eternal snows of Lebanon, along the nar- 
row strip of land whence the great Phenician cities had 
sent their seamen and their colonists, with all the wealth 
of the East, to the shores of the Adriatic and the gates 
of the Mediterranean. Having reached Jaffa, they 
turned inland to .Ramlah, a town sixteen miles only from 
Jerusalem. Two days later the crusaders came in sight 
of the Holy City, the object of their long pilgrimage, the 
cause of wretchedness and death to millions. As their 
eyes rested on the scene hallowed to them through all 
the associations of their faith, the crusaders passed in an 
instant from fierce enthusiasm to a humiliation which 
showed itself in sighs and tears. All fell on their knees, 
to kiss the sacred earth and to pour forth thanksgivings 
that they had been suffered to look upon the desire of 
their eyes. . Putting aside their armour and their wea- 
pons, they advanced in pilgrim's garb and with bare feet 



/O The Crusades. ch. in. 

towards the spot which the Saviour had trodden in the 
hours of his agony and his passion. 

But before their feelings of devotion could be in- 
dulged, there was other woik to be done. The chiefs took 
Tune U P th^ 1 " posts on those sides from which the 

Siege of nature of the ground gave most hope of a- 

jerusaem. succe ssful assault. On the northern side 
were Godfrey and Tancred, Robert of Flanders, and 
Robert of Normandy ; on the west Raymond with his 
Provencals. On the fifth day, without siege instruments, 
with only one ladder, and trusting to mere weight, the 
crusaders made a desperate assault upon the walls. 
Some succeeded in reaching the summit, and the very 
rashness of their attack struck terror for a moment into 
their enemies. But the garrison soon rallied, and the 
invaders were all driven back or hurled from the ram- 
parts. The task, it was manifest, must be undertaken in 
a more formal manner. Siege engines must be made, 
and the palm and olive of the immediate neighbour- 
hood would not supply fit materials for their construction. 
These were obtained from the woods of Shechem, a dis- 
tance of thirty miles ; and the work of preparation was 
carried on under the guidance of Gaston of Beam by 
the crews of some Genoese vessels which had recently 
anchored at Jaffa. So passed away more than thirty days, 
days of intense suffering to the besiegers. At Antioch 
they had been distressed chiefly by famine : in place of 
this wretchedness they had here the greater miseries of 
thirst. The enemy had carefully destroyed every place 
which might serve as a receptacle of water ; and in seek- 
ing for it over miles of desolate country they were ex- 
posed to the harassing attacks of Moslem horsemen. 
Nor had visions and miracles improved the morals or 
discipline of the camp ; and the ghost of Adhemar of 
Puy appeared to rebuke the horrible sins which were 



1099. The. First Crusade. 7 1 

drawing down upon them the judgements of the Almighty. 
Better service was done by the generosity of Tancred, who 
made up his quarrel with Raymond ; and the enthusiasm 
of the crusaders was again roused by the preaching of 
Arnold (p. 66) and the hermit Peter. The narrative of 
the siege of Jericho in the book of Joshua suggested pro- 
bably the procession in which the clergy singing hymns 
preceded the laity round the walls of the city. The 
Saracens on the ramparts mocked their devotions by 
throwing dirt upon crucifixes : but they paid a terrible 
price for these insults. On the next day the final as- 
sault began, and was carried on through the day with 
the same monotony of brute force and carnage which 
marked all the operations of this merciless war. The 
darkness of night brought no rest. The actual combat 
was suspended, but the besieged were incessantly occu- 
pied in repairing the breaches made by the assailants, 
while these were busied in making their dispositions for 
the last mortal conflict. In the midst of that deadly 
struggle, when it seemed that the Cross must after all go 
down before the Crescent, a knight was seen on Mount 
Olivet, waving his glistening shield to rouse the cham- 
pions of the Holy Sepulchre to the supreme effort. { It 
is St. George the Martyr who has come again to help us,' 
cried Godfrey, and at his words the crusaders started up 
without a feeling of fatigue and carried everything before 
them. The day, we are told, was Friday, the hour was 
three in the afternoon (the moment at which the last cry 
from the cross announced the accomplishment of the 
Saviour's passion), when Letold of Tournay stood, the 
first victorious champion of the cross, on the walls of 
Jerusalem. Next to him came, we are told, his brother 
Engelbert : the third was Godfrey. Tancred with the 
two Roberts stormed the gate of St. Stephen ; the Pro- 
vencals climbed the ramparts by ladders, and the con- 



J 2 The Crusades. ch. hi. 

quest of Jerusalem was achieved. The insults offered a 
T , little while ago to the crucifixes were avenged 

July. o & 

Storming of by Godfrey's orders in the massacre of hun- 
dreds ; the carnage in the mosque of Omar 
swept away the bodies of thousands in a deluge of 
human blood. The Jews were all burnt alive in their 
synagogues. The horses of the crusaders, who rode up 
to the porch of the temple, were (so the story goes) up to 
the knees in the loathsome stream ; and the forms of 
Christian knights hacking and hewing the bodies of the 
living and the dead furnished a pleasant commentary on 
the sermon of Urban at Clermont. 

From the duties of slaughter these disciples of the 

Lamb of God passed to those of devotion. Bareheaded 

and barefooted, clad in a robe of pure white 

Adoration of ... . r . , , . r , 

the crusa- lmen, in an ecstasy of joy and thankfulness 
church of mingled with profound contrition, Godfrey 
the Sepul- entered the church of the Holy Sepulchre 
and knelt at the tomb of his Lord. With 
groans and tears his followers came, each in his turn, to 
offer his praises for the divine mercy which had vouch- 
safed this triumph to the armies of Christendom. With 
feverish earnestness they poured forth the vows which 
bound them to sin no more, and the excitement of prayer 
and slaughter, perhaps of both combined, led them to 
see everything which might be needed to give effect to 
the closing scene of this appalling tragedy. As the saints 
had arisen from their graves when the Son of Man gave 
up the ghost on Calvary, so the spirits of the pilgrims 
who had died on the terrible journey came to take part in 
the great thanksgiving. Foremost among them was 
Adhemar of Puy, rejoicing in the prayers for forgiveness 
and the resolutions of repentance which promised a new 
era of peace upon earth and of good will towards all men. 
With departed saints were mingled living men who de- 



1099- 



The First Crusade. 73 



served all the honour which might be paid to them. The 
backsliding of the hermit Peter was blotted out of the 
memory of those who remembered only the fiery elo- 
quence which had first called them to their now triumphant 
pilgrimage, and the zeal which had stirred the ^ , . 

r ° ° ' Exaltation 

heart of Christendom to cut short the tyranny of Peter the 
of the Unbeliever in the birth-land of Chris- ermit - 
tianity. The assembled throng fell down at his feet, and 
gave thanks to God who had vouchsafed to them such a 
teacher. His task was done, and in the annals of the 
time Peter is heard of no more. 

On this dreadful day Tancred had spared three 
hundred captives to whom he had given a standard as a 
pledge of his protection and a guarantee of their safety. 
Such misplaced mercy was a crime in the eyes of the 
crusaders. The massacre of the first day may have 
been aggravated by the ungovernable excite- Second and 
ment of victory : but it was resolved that on dehberate . 

' massacre in 

the next day there should be offered up a Jerusalem. 
more solemn and deliberate sacrifice. The men whom 
Tancred had spared were all murdered ; and the wrath 
of Tancred was roused not by their fate but by an act 
which called his honour into question. The butchery 
went on with impartial completeness, old and young, 
decrepit men and women, mothers with their infants, 
boys and girls, young men and maidens in the bloom of 
their vigour, all were mowed down, and their bodies 
mangled until heads and limbs were tossed together in 
awful chaos. A few were hidden away by Raymond 
of Toulouse ; his motive, however, was not mercy, 
but the prospects of gain in the slave-market. After 
this great act of faith and devotion the streets of the 
Holy City were washed by Saracen prisoners ; but 
whether these (like the women servants whom Odysseus 
strung up like sparrows after the slaughter of the suitors) 



74 Tke Crusades. ch. in. 

were butchered when their work was ended we are not 
told. 

Four centuries and a half had passed away, when 
these things were done, since Omar had entered Jeru- 
Compassion salem as a conqueror and knelt outside the 
of Omar and church of Constantine, that his followers 
might not trespass within it on the privileges 
of the Christians (p. 13). The contrast is at the least 
marked between the caliph of the Prophet and the chil- 
dren of the Holy Catholic Church. 

When, the business of slaughter being ended, the 
chiefs met to choose a king for the realm which they had 
Election of won wlt ^ tne i r swords, one man only appeared 
Godfrey to to whom the crown could fitly be offered, 
relgnty of Baldwin was lord of Edessa ; Bohemond 
Jerusalem. ru i e d at Antioch ; Hugh of Vermandois and 
Stephen of Chartres had returned to Europe ; Robert of 
Flanders cared not to stay ; the Norman Robert had no 
mind to forfeit the duchy which he had mortgaged ; and 
Raymond was discredited by his avarice, and in part 
also by his traffic in the visions of Peter Barthelemy. 
But in the city where his Lord had worn the thorny 
crown, the veteran leader who had looked on ruthless 
slaughter without blenching and had borne his share in 
swelling the stream of blood would wear no earthly 
diadem, nor take the title of king. He would watch over 
his Master's grave and the interests of his worshippers 
under the humble guise of Baron and Defender of the 
Holy Sepulchre ; and as such, a fortnight after his election, 
Battle of As- Godfrey departed to do battle with the hosts 
caion. Q f foe Fatimite caliph of Egypt, who now 

felt that the loss of Jerusalem was too high a price for 
the humiliation of his rivals. The conflict took place at 
Ascalon, and the Fatimite army was miserably routed. 
Godfrey returned to Jerusalem, to hang the sword and 



[099- 



The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. 75 



standard of the sultan before the Holy Sepulchre and to 
bid farewell to the pilgrims who were now to set out on 
their homeward journey. He retained, with Return of 
300 knights under Tancred, only 2,000 foot the pilgrims 
soldiers for the defence of his kingdom ; t0 urope ' 
and so ended the first act in the great drama of the 
crusades. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE LATIN KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM. 

The reign of Godfrey fell short by five days even of the 
brief period of a single year ; but it sufficed not only for 
the discomfiture of the Egyptian sultan, Reign of 
but for the foundation of a kingdom resting Godfre y- 
on an elaborate system of carefully defined laws. His 
conflict with the Fatimite caliph was followed by a con- 
flict with Daimbert bishop of Pisa, the new Latin 
patriarch of Jerusalem. As legate of the pope Pascal II. 
(Urban had died a fortnight after the fall of the Holy 
City, in other words, before he could hear of ^ . , 

J ' ' Daimbert, 

the victory of the crusaders,) Daimbert had patriarch of 
invested Godfrey and Bohemond with their 
feudal possessions, and he lost no time in asserting the 
papal claim by demanding immediate recognition as the 
lord of Jerusalem and Jaffa. In each of these cities a 
quarter was at once assigned to him, and the whole was 
to pass into his hands if Godfrey should die without 
children. Such was the compact made by the Baron and 
Defender of the Holy Sepulchre ; but it was not to pass 
unchallenged. 

We have seen Godfrey in the siege and conquest of 
Jerusalem wading with exultation through a sea of human 



y6 The Crusades. ch. iv. 

blood ; seizing infants by their feet and dashing them 
against the walls or whirling them over the battlements, 
or aiding and abetting those who did so. But a few days 
or a few weeks later this man was to be seen seated as an 
impartial judge among men whom he, the king and sove- 
reign, regarded as his equals, setting about the grave task 
of compiling a code of laws on the only basis which can 
serve as the foundation of true constitutional government, 
— the sanction, namely, of the laws by the men who are 
to obey them. There was little enough of freedom in 
the feudal system ; and the system embodied in the code 
Assize of popularly known as the Assize of Jerusalem 

Jerusalem. was ^ ut a re fl ex i on f the general body of law 
in force throughout Western Christendom. Still the 
legislation of Godfrey and his successors is full of in- 
struction, not merely as showing with what success the 
system of one country may be transferred to another, 
but even as throwing a clearer light on the working of 
feudalism in Western Europe. The story went that the 
code thus drawn up with the advice of the Latin pilgrims 
was deposited in the Holy Sepulchre and was lost with 
the fall of the city. The tale lies open to grave suspicion. 
The whole code would form no heavy weight for a beast 
of burden, while it would be an object utterly valueless in 
the eyes of the Mahomedan conquerors. It is of more 
importance to remark that the traditions which this lost 
record was supposed to have preserved continued to 
guide the Latin principalities of the East, until in 
A.D. 1369, having undergone a final revision, they became 
the laws of the Latin kingdom of Cyprus. 

The legislation of this code on the relation of vassals 
Judicial to their overlords, on the subjects of wardship, 

courts msti- Q f j uc ]j c i a i combats, of villenage and slavery, 

tuted by J ' * J * 

Godfrey. may have been more minute and dehnite than 

the laws of Western Europe ; but it laid down no new 



uoo. The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. yy 

principles. A more important feature is to be found in 
the judicial courts which owed their institution to the 
first Latin king of Jerusalem. In the court of the barons 
or peers the king himself was the president : in that of 
th^ burgesses he was represented by the viscount, and it 
is in this court that we find the popular element which 
was hereafter to give a new character to the history of 
Europe. It consisted of a number of the citizens chosen 
for their trustworthiness and their wisdom. Popular 
election, indeed, was wanting ; but an assembly of bur- 
gesses sworn to judge according to the laws in all the 
concerns of their equals was a germ from which good 
fruit might have been looked for, if the seed had been 
sown in fitting soil. Not less wise was the institution of 
a third court which dealt with Syrian Christians through 
the Syrians themselves. But although the legislative 
work of Godfrey and his successors was not wholly in 
vain, it was an exotic which could live only with the 
ascendency of the Latins. It was sown in blood, nursed 
amid storms, and uprooted by the tempest which swept 
the Western Christians from Palestine. 

The death of Godfrey raised in the patriarch Daimbert 
hopes which were to be disappointed. The subjects of 
Godfrey had no mind to be governed by a 
priest, and Tancred offered the throne to July 18. 
Bohemond. But Bohemond was now a cap- 
tive, and popular favour inclined to Baldwin, Godfrey's 
brother, the lord of the Mesopotamian Edessa. Resigning 
his principality to his kinsman of the same name, 
Baldwin hastened to Jerusalem, and was there chosen 
king. At first Daimbert held aloof in sullen displeasure ; 
but his opposition was at length overcome, and the 
patriarch poured the anointing oil over the A D IIO0 _ 
sovereign. Baldwin reigned for eighteen IIlS - 
years, and long before those years had come to an end, 



7 8 The Crusades. 



en. iv. 



the great chiefs of the first crusade had all passed away. 
In his second year he was compelled to resist an Egyp- 
tian invasion ; but his army was defeated in a battle near 
a.d. hoi. Ramlah, in which Stephen earl of Chartres 
Stepfen f f was ta ken prisoner and slain. He had been 
chartres. driven back from Europe by the reproaches 

of his wife Adela, a daughter of the Norman conqueror 
of England, and in her judgement at least he thus re- 
a.d. 1105. deemed his fame. Four years later Ray- 
Raymond of mond of Toulouse died in old age on the 
Toulouse. sea-coast, having satisfied probably neither 
his ambition nor his avarice. He had conquered Tortosa 
and there founded a principality : but the possession 
of Tripolis which he had coveted was reserved for his 
son Bertrand. Bertrand enjoyed his new fief for two years 
only, and was succeeded by his son Pontius, to whom 
Tancred left his widow as a bride. 

The return of Bohemond to Antioch Avas soon followed 
by his capture in a petty expedition for the enlargement 
a.d. 1 103. of his principality ; but his place was well 
faTefofBo" filled h Y Tancred ; and when after two years 
hemond. f imprisonment Bohemond came back in 

spite of all the efforts of Alexios to get possession of his 
person, he found himself master not only of Antioch but 
of Laodicea and Apameia. In the open war which fol- 
lowed with the Byzantine emperor, Bohemond was defeated 
by land, but with the aid of the Pisans was victorious at 
sea. His thoughts were running probably on another 
crusade when his help was invoked by Daimbert the 
patriarch of Jerusalem, who took refuge at his court from 
what he chose to call the tyranny of Baldwin. With the 
prelate Bohemond sailed for Italy, leaving 
Tancred to rule at Antioch. His name had 
gone before him, and Philip I. the French king hastened 



IIOO-UI2. The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. 79 

to invite to his court the most redoubtable of the cham- 
pions of Christendom. Bohemond became the son-in-law 
of Philip, and sailed again for the land of 

I • 1 J 1 ■ "I -L 1 A - D - IX ° 6 - 

his old exploits with 5,000 horse and 40,000 

foot. Once more he attacked Durazzo ; but the bribes of 

Alexios foiled his enterprise, and Bohemond 

1 • ir AD - iio 7- 

was constrained to content himself with a 

treaty which admitted him to the imperial presence as 
the peer of the Byzantine sovereign. He went back to 
Italy and was making ready the next year for 
his return to Antioch when death cut short 
his vehement and stormy career. Tancred remained 
lord of his principality. He was still in the prime of his . 
manhood, and a disposition which, as compared with that 
of his fellows, was generous and merciful, AD 
might promise a long time of righteous go- Death of 
vernment for his people. But before three 
years had passed Tancred died childless, of a wound re- 
ceived in battle, and left his power to his kinsman Roger. 
The only man who had derived permanent benefit 
from these crusading expeditions was the man to whom 
it might be supposed that they had caused Effect of the 
the greatest mischief and annoyance. It was c ™- s ades on 
of the first importance to the safety of the tine empire. 
Byzantine empire that the Turks should be drawn away 
from the nearer countries of Bithynia and Phrygia. This 
great result the crusade fully achieved. The capital of 
the Turkish sultan of Roum was transferred from Nice to 
the remote and obscure city of Cogni (Tconium, Ikonion); 
the authority of the Greek emperor was re-established 
over all the maritime regions of Asia Minor ; and the 
existence of his empire prolonged for nearly 350 years. 
But Alexios, with his crafty and scheming temper to 
which incessant occupation in tasks serious or trifling 



8o The Crusades. 



CH. IV 



brought a sense of self-importance, was pre-eminently a 
man to think more of annoyances than of grave disasters. 
For him accordingly it was grief of spirit that Latin chiefs 
should fail to do him homage for distant conquests, the 
possession of which could bring him no good ; and he 
had a standing ground of quarrel and complaint in the 
trouble given or the alarm caused by the hosts of pilgrims 
which Europe poured out upon the East as soon as the 
tidings were brought that Jerusalem was in the hands of 
F , the Christians. It certainly cannot be said 

swarms of that the pilgrims left Alexios much time for 
idleness. A rabble more disorderly than that 
of Walter the Penniless followed the armies of Godfrey 
and his confederates. These were Lombards headed by 
the archbishop of Milan ; and when Alexios insisted on 
their crossing the Bosporos before more should come, they 
broke out into open war and attempted to storm the 
quarter of Blachernai. These were followed by a better 
appointed force under the count of Blois and the constable 
of the emperor of Germany, who spoke with confidence 
of attacking Bagdad and destroying the caliphat. But 
the dress of the Greek clergy in some Phrygian town 
excited their wrath. Priests and others were massacred ; 
and the sequel of the expedition was as disastrous as 
that of the hordes cut off by Kilidje Arslan at the hill of 
bones (p. 41). No better success attended the com- 
panies gathered under the standards of the count of 
Nevers, the count of Poitiers, and Hugh of Vermandois. 
With the last of these chiefs came hundreds of ladies who 
looked for nothing less than a triumphal march from 
Constantinople to Jerusalem : for almost all of these a 
a.d. hoi. journey of unspeakable misery came to an 
Hu at ho°/ver enc ^ m ^ e s l ave_mar kets of Bagdad and 
mandois. other great cities of the East. The counts of 

Nevers and of Poitiers reached Antioch on foot with a 



no i. The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. 81 

few followers : Hugh of Vermandois managed to escape 
to Tarsus, and there he died. 

An endless series of wars, some of which were forced 
upon him while others were mere blunders, was to occupy 
the life of Alexios to its close. Throughout Dea thofthe 
it may be said that successful dissimulation emperor 
and even successful treachery brought him 
greater delight than the most decisive victory in the field. 
Some of his worst faults are recorded as constituting his 
greatest merits in the turgid pages of his daughter Anna : 
but she and her mother Irene were to learn, as he lay 
almost at the last gasp, that they too could be sufferers 
by his astuteness. He allowed his son John 

} - . . . . J A.D. IIl8. 

to frustrate at the last moment their most 
cherished scheme, and his wife bade him farewell with 
the plain-spoken phrase, ' You die, as you have lived,— a 
hypocrite.' 

While the days of Alexios were drawing to an end at 
Constantinople, Baldwin king of Jerusalem was dying in 
Egypt, whither he had gone in the hope of crippling the 
power of the Fatimite sultan. His body was embalmed, 
brought back to Jerusalem, and laid in the sepulchre of 
Godfrey. On the day of his funeral the great council 
met to elect his successor. His brother 

A.D. IIIo— 

Eustace was absent in Europe ; and the crown "3*- 
was offered to his kinsman Baldwin du Bourg, kingof jeni- 
who had been recommended for the post by salem - 
the first king, and whose claim was urged by Joceline 
of Courtenay. In his gratitude Baldwin invested Joceline 
with the principality of Edessa. 

It may be enough to say of this king that during his 
reign, as in that of his predecessor, the limits of the 
Latin power were being gradually extended, the new 
acquisitions being bestowed on princes who held them 
as fiefs of the kingdom of Jerusalem. After a siege of 



82 The Crusades. 



CH. IV 



six weeks Sidon had fallen, in the days of the first Bald- 
win. In this blockade the Latins were aided 
Conquest of to good purpose by the fleet and army of the 
,bidon. Norwegian Siward. Nine years later the 

'Venetian doge Michael came to worship at the Holy 
Sepulchre, and offered the help of his fleet for the reduc- 
tion of Ascalon or Tyre. The choice fell upon Tyre, and 
the doge stipulated that one half of that city should 
remain to himself in absolute sovereignty, 

A.D. II24. _ & - ' 

Conquest of while the Venetians should also have a church, 
a street, and other privileges in Jerusalem. 
The siege lasted five months, when the still great, and 
once peerless, Phenician city was compelled to yield and 
become the seat of a Christian archbishopric. But if the 
crusading dominions were thus enlarged, it is perhaps of 
little use to speak of the greatest extent reached by a 
kingdom almost as restless and as changeful as the sea. 

The third successor of Godfrey on the throne of Jeru- 
salem was Fulk of Anjou, whose lot on the whole was 
a d iMi- more tranquil than that of his predecessors, 
"44- . although in attempting to aid Raymond count 

ofje'rusa? of Tripoli against Zenghis sultan of Aleppo, he 
lem - was shut up in the castle of Barin or Montfer- 

rat, and compelled to purchase his safety with gold. He was 
succeeded by his son Baldwin, a boy thirteen 

A.D. II44~ J 

1 162. years of age, who was soon to see what the 

prowess of the West could do in a second 
crusade. The feuds of the Christian princes of Antioch 
and Edessa gave to Zenghis an opportunity of attacking 
the principality of Joceline of Courtenay. For eighteen 
days the inhabitants of Edessa awaited in terrible sus- 
pense the result of a siege in which for them surrender 
meant death. The deeds of Godfrey and his fellows on 
the fall of Jerusalem were still fresh in the memory of 
their enemies / and the heralds of Zenghis were not slack 



1 1 5- 1 1 62. The Second Crusade. 8, 



in teaching his men that conquest brought with it the 
right of pillage. The Turks learnt the lesson A D 

Fall of 
Edessa. 



in spirit as well as in letter ; and on the fall 



of Edessa the deeds of blood and cruelty 
showed that Moslems might be apt pupils in the horrible 
school in which the Christians had attained a standard of 
ideal excellence. The story told once needs not to be told 
again. The murder of Zenghis awakened in Joceline of 
Edessa the hope that the lost city might be recovered. 
The attempt issued in a second disaster : and nothing 
remained but an appeal to the religious enthusiasm of 
Western Christendom. 



'OC 



CHAPTER V. 

THE SECOND CRUSADE. 



What. Peter the Hermit had been for the first crusade, 
that St. Bernard was for the second ; and on Peter 
Bernard looked down with undisguised con- Bernard the 
tempt. The failure of that first ?reat enter- a P 0Stle of , 

r ° the second 

prise he ascribes to the wretched counsels of crusade. 
the fanatical guide whose name he supposes that his 
hearers or correspondents have sometimes heard. To the 
holy war which he felt himself called upon to kindle he 
looked forward without the least misgiving, and the proud 
confidence which he feels and everywhere expresses may 
be taken as a special characteristic of Western mo- 
nachism in its palmiest days. While the monks of the 
East were losing themselves more and more in the mists 
of dreamy or useless speculation, the cell of the Western 
monk became an imperial chamber from which went forth 
the letters which were to cheer or counsel the Vicar of 



84 The Crusades. ch. v. 

Christ, to rebuke kings and statesmen, to warn and guide 
the faithful, to recall the wanderer to the fold, and to con- 
found the unbeliever. For these high offices he had a 
commission higher than that of any earthly authority. 
They fell within the range of his duty as the member 
of a society, the soldier of an army, which was to fight 
the battles of the King of kings. He was the knight 
sheathed in the impenetrable armour of the Spirit, and he 
bore in his hand the invincible sword of faith. He had 
learnt the language, and transferred to his monastic life 
the images and terms, of feudalism. For him action was 
everything ; solitude with its essential idea of rest was 
in comparison of this as nothing. He fled from his home 
to the cloister, because he could there fight better against 
material and spiritual corruption. He chose the most 
severe schools which he could find for the exercise of 
his self-discipline. He withdrew from these into wilder 
deserts, if they failed to meet his ideal of self-mortifi- 
cation. He established what he called a reform, if exist- 
ing rules appeared to him too indulgent to human weakness. 
Such was the life of St. Bernard. He was from first to 
^ist a crusader, and the most pertinacious and successful 
MM his crusades was against the peace and quiet of his own 
family. His mother had made a secret vow to devote all 
her children to God ; and Bernard held it among the first 
of his duties to see that her vow should be fulfilled. 
Power, wealth, and dignity in the world were within his 
grasp : he threw them all aside. The holy house of Mo- 
lesme had sent forth some of its most austere members 
under an Englishman named Stephen Harding, and these 
found a ruder and more savage home on the borders of 
Champagne and Burgundy, at Citeaux, the cradle of the 
great Cistercian order. Thither came Bernard in his early 
manhood, and there he remained until he in his turn went 
forth to found a new house in the gloomy and ill-famed 



30- 



The Second Crusade. 85 



valley to which he gave a name associated for ever with 
his memory. Here at Clairvaux his father took the habit 
of a monk, and died in his arms. His brothers and his 
sister had made their profession before him, — not all 
without a struggle ; but who should resist the Divine 
Will ? The wife of one of his brothers refused to make 
the sacrifice of her husband's love : but a sudden illness 
convinced her of the perils of disobedience, and like her 
husband she found her home in a convent. 

This was the man whom the tidings of the fall of 
Edessa filled with profound emotion. He could no more 
doubt the duty of ridding the Holy Land of „ 

,,',,. . sources of 

unbelievers than he could call into question Bernard's in- 
his own mission against all ungodliness and fluence - 
sin. But if it had been right to rush to the rescue of the 
Holy Sepulchre when it was still in the hands of the 
infidel, it was still more right, it was indispensably ne- 
cessary, to keep that sacred place and the land in which 
it lay from falling again under the old despotism. For 
Bernard, when his mind was once fixed on any enter- 
prise, there could be no rest, as there could also be no 
measure in the vehemence of his eloquence. The 
energy with which he espoused the cause of 
Innocent II. against a rival pope had in- 
vested him with an influence second to that of no other 
man of his age ; and he had wielded 
this power with tremendous effect against 
Abelard, the keenest and most daring thinker of Latin 
Christendom. 

Three years before the council of Sens, which under 
the direction of Bernard condemned the propositions or 
heresies of Abelard, died the French king _ , e 

Death of 

Louis VI., surnamed the Fat, the monarch (if Louis VI. of 
so he might be called) of a scanty kingdom the France - 
enlargement of which would best be promoted by advanta- 



86 The Crusades. 



ch. v. 



geous marriages. Of such an opportunity Louis the Fat 
eagerly availed himself when William, lord of Poitou and 
Guienne, the wide region lying between the Loire and the 
Adour, offered his daughter and heiress Eleanor as the 
wife of the heir to the French crown. By right of this 
marriage Louis VII. found himself on the 
death of his father and of his father-in-law 
possessed of a far larger kingdom and greater resources 
than he had expected to inherit; and he might have 
made it the business of his life to guard and extend his 
dominions at home, had he not felt himself suddenly 
called to take up his cross and follow the example of his 
great-uncle Hugh of Vermandois. In a war with Theo- 
bald count of Champagne, he had stormed and set fire to 
the castle of Vitry. To escape from his soldiers 

A.D. 1 IA2. . 

the people had taken refuge in a neighbouring 
church. To this building the flames spread, and all 
within it, men, women, and children, 1,300, it is said, in 
number, were burnt. The sight of the scorched and 
charred bodies filled the king with horror and grief : sick- 
ness followed, and he determined to work out his repent- 
ance by leading his armies to the Holy Land. His 
remorse was quickened by the eloquence of Bernard, and 
Louis put on the blood-red cross in the council of Vezelay. 
From this council the pope, Eugenius III., was absent. 
His place was more than supplied by his friend and 
a.d. 1 146. adviser, whose voice stirred the depths of 
Council of every heart. The letter of Eugenius held out 
Vezelay. t the crusaders all the promises which had 

been assured to them by Urban at Clermont, and warned 
them against the vices which had brought disaster and 
disgrace on the arms of Christendom. But for the mo- 
ment every other feeling than that of fierce yearning for 
conflict was swept away by the furious torrent of Bernard's 
oratory. He preached to the Knights Templars, the 



1 130-1146. The Second Crusade. 87 

members of that splendid order which was already 
astonishing the world with its valour and its Speech of 
haughtiness. Associated at first for the pro- Bernard - 
tection of pilgrims on the road to Jerusalem, they had 
established themselves in the Holy City itself, 
and received from Baldwin II. some ground Knights 
to the east of the Temple ; and the mosque of Tem P lars - 
Omar, purified from its defilements, became the church of 
the order. The fiery warriors who professed themselves 
the humble guardians of the Holy Sepulchre needed no 
stimulus of rhetoric to spur them on : and the rhetoric of 
Bernard was fierce enough to stir even the most peace- 
able. In this new philosophy butchery was the surest 
means of grace, and carnage imparted indelible sanctity. 
' The Christian who slays the unbeliever in the Holy War 
is sure of his reward, more sure if he is slain. The 
Christian glories in the death of the Pagan, because by it 
Christ is glorified ; by his own death both he himself and 
Christ are still more glorified/ The floodgates of enthusiasm 
were once again opened wide ; and the scenes of the 
council of Clermont were reproduced with little change. 
Accompanied by the French king who wore the cross 
conspicuously on his dress, Bernard mounted a wooden 
platform and addressed the impassioned multitude. His 
speech was scarcely ended when all with one voice cried 
aloud for the cross. The saint gave or scattered the 
badges which had been provided. When these were 
exhausted, he tore up his own dress to furnish more. 

But if Louis was eager to depart, Conrad 
of Germany hung back. The emperor felt o^ConracT 
more anxious about the reduction of refrac- German °to 
tory princes than for the slaughter of un- join the cm- 
known infidels. Christmas came; and at 
Spires first, afterwards at Ratisbon, Bernard strove to im- 
press on him the paramount duty of the crusade. Conrad 



88 The Crusades. ch. y. 

promised to give his answer on the following day ; and 
on that day Bernard preached a sermon, painting in 
awful colours the terrors of the Great Assize when all the 
kindreds of the nations should be gathered before the 
judgement-seat of the Son of Man. He implored the 
emperor to think of the account which he would then 
have to give, and of the infinite shame and endless agony 
which would be his portion, if he should then stand con- 
victed of unjust stewardship. Conrad was melted to 
tears, and promised to take the cross. Bernard was 
prepared for him and for all, and fastened the badge on 
their shoulders at once. Taking from the altar the con- 
secrated banner, he delivered it to the emperor, and the 
hand of God was seen in the crowd of thieves and ruffians 
who thronged to enlist themselves as champions of the 

cross. Four months later Louis welcomed 
Whiteuntide. the pope at St. Denys, and received from 
Lou e is n vii f Eugenius at the altar the wallet and staff of 
and the pope the pilgrim, with the banner which was to 

lead him to victory. The wishes of the de- 
vout turned naturally to Bernard rather than to others of 
whose earnestness they could not have equal assurance ; 
but to their prayers that he would head the enterprise he 
replied that he was no general and that they must find 
some one to lead them who was skilled in the handling 
of earthly armies. 

When the followers of Peter the Hermit and Walter the 
Penniless began their march along the Rhinelands, their 
Persecution crusading zeal vented itself first in horrible 
of the Jews cruelties practised on the Jews (p. 39). That 

stirredupby .. v . , __ , J , , u f yi , 

the monk vile example was followed by the bands now 
Rodoiph. gathered round the standard of the emperor. 

The appetite for blood was whetted by the wolfish howl- 
ings of the monk Rodoiph ; and the spell of bigotry 
enlisted on his side a man otherwise well deserving the 



H47. The Second Crusade. 89 

reverence of all ages, Peter the Venerable, abbot of 
Clugny. But the fanaticism of Bernard could not fasten 
itself on men against whom not even a Suppressed 
semblance of wrong could be charged ; and by Bernard - 
he refused to punish them now for the crimes of their fore- 
fathers in the days of Pontius Pilate. ' God has punished 
the Jews/ he said, ' by their dispersion ; it is not for man 
to punish them by murder.' Rodolph was sent back to his 
monastery : but it was no easy task to repress the fury of 
a multitude already drunk with the blood of hundreds of 
victims in all the great Rhine cities. 

Conrad and Louis had met at Mainz. With Louis 
came his wife Eleanor ; and here he was joined by the 
counts of Toulouse, Nevers, Flanders and March of the 
other chiefs of the crusade, among these crusaders 

-. • • • --it-. 1 tv r i ii under Con- 

being, it is said, Roger de Mowbray and the ra d and 

earl of Warren and Surrey from England. Louls - 

The story of the enterprise is soon told. The numbers of 

the host were vast, but numbers, never easily ascertained, 

are least of all to be depended upon in such expeditions 

as these. The order of disciplined armies may have 

lessened the perils and lightened the hardships of the 

passage across Europe ; and the troop of women who 

with spear and shield, headed by the Golden-footed 

Dame, marched on, as they thought, to conquest, may 

have congratulated themselves on the pleasantness of their 

task. The real danger began when they had passed from 

Europe into Asia. The suspicions of Conrad „ m , , 

, , , , , . , Refusal of 

had been soon and vehemently excited against Conrad to 
the Greek emperor Manuel, grandson of ™f" M e a ! m " 
Alexios. These suspicions were so much nuel at Con- 

1 i 1 r 1 11/— • stantinople. 

strengthened before he reached Constanti- 
nople that he refused all interviews with him and crossed 
the Bosporos without coming into his presence. 

The French king was more complaisant ; but if he was 



90 The Crusades. ch. v. 

satisfied with the welcome given to him by Manuel in 
Supposed person, he was alarmed and indignant at the 
treachery of news that the Byzantine sovereign was in 

Manuel. . J .,,„,,., 

secret correspondence with the Turkish sultan 
of Cogni (Iconium, Ikonion). His indignation was fully 
shared by his army ; and while some held that the para- 
mount duty which called them to Palestine should over- 
bear the avenging of all private wrongs, others insisted 
that a power which had allowed the Holy Sepulchre and 
the Holy Land itself to slip from its grasp, and had only 
placed hindrances in the way of the pilgrims and cham- 
pions of the cross, should be swept utterly away. 

For the present the storm was lulled ; and the 
crusaders went on their way, to find that the guides with 
Disastrous which Manuel had furnished them led them 
Conradand mto ar *^ deserts or betrayed them directly to 
Louis. the enemy. Conrad had already lost thou- 

sands or tens of thousands in Lykaonia, when the French 
king, who had been cheated with false tidings of his 
triumphant progress, received on the shores of the 
Askanian lake (p. 55) the news of his great disaster. 
Conrad himself soon followed the miserable fugitives who 
had told his dismal story, and the two sovereigns resolved 
to strike off from the beaten path and make their way 
through the lands bordering the eastern shores of the 
Egean Sea. They had advanced as far as the Lydian 
Philadelphia, when the threatening appearance of things 
impelled many to return to Constantinople, and Conrad 
himself embarked near Ephesus. Louis with his people 
pressed on to the banks of the Meander, where the Turks 
who hastened to attack them were signally defeated. 
This defeat was more than avenged in the mountain 
passes beyond Laodicea whence after fearful slaughter 
the French reached the Pamphylian Attaleia. From this 
seaport it was proposed that all, whether soldiers or 



II47 . The Second Crusade. 91 

pilgrims, should go by sea to Antioch. It was decided 
that the latter only should take ship, as Louis urged 
that the warriors ought to follow in the steps of the 
conquerors of Jerusalem. But the ships promised by the 
governor of Attaleia proved to be wholly insufficient for 
this purpose. The king embarked with his army, and 
the pilgrims with the sick were left in charge of the count 
of Flanders. The guard was inadequate ; the sick were 
murdered by the people of Attaleia ; the Turks bore 
down hardly on the pilgrims. The count of Flanders 
escaped by sea, and seven thousand miserable wanderers 
struggled onwards on the road by which they hoped to 
reach Jerusalem. Their journey was soon ended by the 
martyrdom which according to the promise of Urban and 
Eugenius was to ensure their salvation. 

The arrival of the French king with his forces at 
Antioch caused no slight alarm to the Turks of Caesarea 
and Aleppo. But although he was earnestly visit of the 
pressed to take advantage of their dismay by t ^ r jerusa- ng 
striking a sudden blow, nothing could dis- km. 
suade him to put off his journey to Jerusalem ; and the 
entreaties of Eleanor, who was well content A . D . II4 8. 
to stay where she was, excited in him mingled March - 
feelings of resentment and suspicion. After disasters so 
terrible his entrance into Jerusalem bore too much like- 
ness to a triumph ; and after a council with Conrad, who 
had reached Ptolemais, the project of rescuing Reso ] ution 
Edessa, which had been the very purpose of to attack 
the crusade, was for the time abandoned for 
the siege, and, as it was hoped, the conquest, of the more 
important and nearer city of Damascus. 

With the aid of the Knights of the Temple and of 
St. John, the siege of this city was prosecuted siege of 
with a skill and vigour which seemed to leave Damascus. 
no doubt of the result. The Damascenes were in despair, 



92 The Crusades. ch. v. 

and not a few turned their thoughts to flight as the only 
means of safety : but with incredible infatuation the king 
of the French and the German emperor took counsel not 
for the completion of the enterprise but for the disposal of 
the city when it should have been conquered. The de- 
cision that it should be given to Thierry count of Flanders, 
roused the indignation of the barons of Palestine, who now 
scrupled not to add treachery to the long catalogue of 
Treachery of their crimes - Bribed by the Turks, they 
the barons of assured the sovereigns that they would have 
better success by attacking the city from 
another quarter than from that on which their toil 
had been all but rewarded by its capture. Abandoning 
their former position in the rich gardens before the town, 
they soon found themselves on barren soil, with scanty 
supplies or none, and with a hopeless task before them. 
It was easier to suspect than to punish the treachery of their 
advisers ; and possibly on account of this treachery the 
Retreat of proposal that they should attack Ascalon was 
the army to rejected. The army retreated to Jerusalem. 
Conrad went back with the remnant of his troops 
to Europe. A year later his example was followed by the 
French king and his wife, of whose conduct Louis had 
Faiiureofthe formed suspicions fully justified by certain 
crusade. judgements pronounced by her in Provencal 

Courts of Love. Only a few months more had passed 
before he obtained a divorce on the plea of consan- 
guinity, and Eleanor transferred her vast inheritance to 
her second husband the Norman duke Henry, afterwards 

Henry II. of England. 

So ended in utter shame and ignominy the second 

. . crusade. The event seemed to give the lie 

Accusations ° 

against St. to the glowing promises and prophecies 

of St. Bernard. So vast had been the 

drain of population to feed this holy war that, in the 



1 148. The Seco?id Crusade. 93 

phrase of an eye-witness, the cities and castles were 
empty, and scarcely one man was left to seven women ; 
and now it was known that the fathers, the husbands, 
the sons, or the brothers of these miserable women would 
see their earthly homes no more. The cry of anguish 
charged Bernard with the crime of sending them forth on 
an errand in which they had done absolutely nothing and 
had reaped only wretchedness and disgrace. For a time 
Bernard himself was struck dumb : but he soon 
remembered that he had spoken with the Hlsanswer: 
authority of God and of his vicegerent, and that the 
guilt of failure must lie at the door of the pilgrims. Like 
those who had gone before them, these men had given 
loose to their passions and filled their camps with de- 
bauchery and confusion ; and such abominations the 
Divine Righteousness could never tolerate. Nay, Ber- 
nard could even see now the folly, if not the iniquity, of 
allowing thieves and murderers to take part in an enter- 
prise in which only the devout and faithful were worthy 
to share. But such considerations were too cold to satisfy 
permanently the temper of the age. The thoughts of the 
many, if not of the few, went back into the old channel, 
when the monk John declared that the slaughtered pil- 
grims had died with the exulting joy of martyrs at the 
thought of their deliverance from a wicked world j^and 

(that from the lips of St. Peter and St. John themselves he 
had the assurance that the ranks of the fallen angels had 
been filled up with the spirits of those who had died 
as champions and pilgrims of the cross whether in the 
Holy Land or on the journey across the 
intervening countries. For Bernard also the Death*"' 
saints and angels, he said, were impatiently Bernard - 
waiting. Five years later, it was in his power to add 
that their desires and his had been fulfilled. 



94 The Crusades. ch. vi. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE LOSS OF JERUSALEM. 

The second crusade not only failed in its purpose : it did 
nothing towards the maintenance of the waning ascen- 
Misuse of dency of the Latins. Even victories brought 
Ae'crusa^ W ^k tnem n0 solid result, and in not a few 
der s. instances victory was misused with a folly 

closely allied to madness. The success of Joceline of 
Courtenay in a battle with Noureddin, son of Zenghis and 
sultan of Aleppo, might have recovered for him his lost 
city of Edessa : he chose rather to indulge in the dan- 
a.d. 1151. gerous luxury of insult, and the renewed 
?o?e t nne f of efforts of the enemy were rewarded by the 
Courtenay. capture of Joceline, his imprisonment 'and 
his death. His widow, by the advice of Baldwin III., 
king of Jerusalem, surrendered to the Greek emperor 
for a stipulated sum such places as still remained in her 
possession ; and the dangers gathering round the Latin 
kingdom were seen in an inroad of Turcomans who 
reached the Mount of Olives. 

This inroad was, it is true, severely punished. The 
king was absent with his army : but the knights of the 
Siege and military orders who were in Jerusalem led out 
fail of As- such of the people as could be got under arms 
and set fire to the camp of the enemy. These 
on their retreat were intercepted by Baldwin, and in the 
conflict 5,000 of their number, it is said, were slain. The 
ad 1 ist ^ e seeme d t0 nav e turned again in favour of 
July. the Christians, when, after an obstinate siege 

which at one moment was all but abandoned, the city of 
Ascalon fell into their hands. 

But the change was one of appearance only. The 



n62. The Loss of Jerusalem. 95 



interminable series of wars, or rather of forays and 
reprisals, went on ; and amidst such contests a .d. 1162. 
the life of Baldwin closed in early manhood, fciSTneru- 
He was thirty-three years of age : but in that salem. 
short time he had won such love as his subjects had to 
bestow, together with the admiration of his enemies. He 
died childless, and although some opposition was made to 
the choice, his brother Almeric was elected to fill his place. 

Almost at the beginning of his reign the affairs of the 
Latin kingdom become complicated with those of Egypt ; 
and the Christians are seen fighting by the Relations of 
side of one Mahomedan race, tribe, or faction Almericwith 
against another. The divisions of Islam may Egyptand 
have turned less on points of theology, but AIc pp°- 
they were scarcely less bitter than those of Christendom; 
and Noureddin, the sultan of Aleppo, eagerly embraced 
the opportunity which gave him a hold on the Fatimite 
caliph of Egypt, when Shawer the grand vizier of that 
caliph came into his presence as a fugitive. A soldier 
named Dargham had risen up and deposed him, and the 
deposition of the vizier was the deposition of the real 
ruler, for the Fatimite caliphs themselves 
were now merely the puppets which the D * 74I ~ 771 ' 
Merovingian kings had been in the days of Charles Martel 
and Pepin. 

Among the generals of Noureddin were Shiracouh and 

his nephew Saladin (Salah-ud-deen) of the shepherd tribe 

of the Koords. These Noureddin despatched Mission of 

into Egypt to effect the restoration of Shawer. Sh i r c C ? ui ?- 

OJr and Saladin 

His enemy Dargham had sought by lavish into Egypt. 

offers to buy the aid of the Latins : but the terms were 
still unsettled when he was worsted in a battle by Shi- 
racouh and slain. Shawer again sat in his old seat ; 
but with success came the fear that his supporters might 



g6 The Crusades. ch. vi. 

prove not less dangerous than his enemies. He refused 
to fulfil his compact with Noureddin and ordered his 
generals to quit the country. Shiracouh replied by the 
capture of Pelusium, and Shawer, more successful than 
Dargham in obtaining aid from Jerusalem, besieged 
Siege and Shiracouh in his newly conquered city with 
surrender of th hel f th f Almeric. The Latin 

Shiracouh in tr J 

Pelusium. king after a fruitless blockade of some months 
found himself called away to meet dangers nearer home ; 
and the besieged general, not knowing the cause, accepted 
an offer of capitulation binding him to leave 
Defeat of the Egypt after the surrender of his prisoners. 
fe- atins J^ But the Latin armies were transferred from 

Noureddin, 

sultan of Egypt only to undergo a desperate defeat at 

the hands of Noureddin in the territory of 
Antioch, and thus to leave Antioch itself at the mercy of 
the enemy. 

Noureddin may have hesitated to attack Antioch from 
the fear that such an enterprise might bring upon him the 
arms of the Greek emperor. He was more anxious to 
Alliance of extinguish the Fatimite power in Egypt, — in 
Aimenc with ot h er WO rds, to become lord of countries hem- 

the Egyp- 7 

tian sultan. ming in the Latin kingdom to the south as 
well as to the north ; and it was precisely this danger 
which king Almeric knew that he had most reason to 
fear. To put the best colour on his design, Noureddin 
obtained from Mostadhi, the caliph of Bagdad, the 
sanction which converted his enterprise into a war as 
holy as that which the Norman conqueror waged against 
Harold of England. The story of the war attests the 
valour of both sides, under the alternations of disaster 
and success. The Latin king had already entered Cairo, 
when a large part of the force of Shiracouh was over- 
whelmed by a terrific sandstorm. But the retreat of 



1 1 63. The Loss of Jerusalem. 97 

Shiracouh across the Nile failed to reassure the Egyp- 
tians. Almeric received 200,000 gold pieces for the con- 
tinuance of his help with, the promise that 200,000 more 
should be paid to him on the complete destruction of their 
enemies ; and the treaty was ratified in the presence of 
the powerless sovereign whose consent was never asked 
for the alliances or treaties of the minister who was his 
master. The remaining events of the campaign were a 
battle in which a part of the army of Almeric Operations 
was defeated by Shiracouh and his nephew of 4 lme ™c 

J r against Shi- 

Saladin ; the surrender of Alexandria on the racouh. 
summons of Shiracouh ; and the blockade of that city by 
Almeric, who at length obtained from the 
Turk the pledge that after an exchange of 
prisoners he would lead his forces away from Egypt, on 
the condition that the road to Syria should be left open 
to him. 

The banners of Almeric and the Fatimite caliph waved 
together on the walls of Alexandria : but on either side 
the peace or truce was a mere makeshift for R ea i designs 
the purpose of gaining time. Neither the of Alm eric. 
Latin king nor the sultan of Aleppo had given up the 
thought of the conquest of Egypt : and Almeric found a 
ready cause of quarrel in the plea that since his own 
return to Palestine the Egyptians had entered into com- 
munications with their enemy and his. The king oi 
Jerusalem had lately married the niece of the Greek em- 
peror, and the latter promised to aid the expedition with 
his fleet. The help of the Knights Hospitallers was easily 
obtained, while (some said, on this account) that of the 
Knights Templars was refused. At length with a lar°-e 
and powerful army Almeric left Jerusalem, 
pretending that his destination was the Syrian AD ' II68 * 
town of Hems : but after a while his march was suddenly 
H 



98 The Crusades. ch. vi. 

turned. In ten days he reached Pelusium ; and the 
storm and capture of that city were followed 
of^AimeHc by a wanton carnage which served to in- 
to Peiusmm. creasej if anything could increase, the reputa- 
tion of the Christians for merciless cruelty. The prayers 
of the vizir Shawer for help were now directed as earnestly 
to the Turkish sultan as they had once been to the Latin 
king of Jerusalem ; but his envoys were also sent to 
Almeric offering him a million pieces of gold, of which a 
tenth part was produced on the spot, Almeric took the 
bribe ; and when his army looked for nothing less than 
the immediate sack of Cairo, they were told that they 
must remain idle while the rest of the money was being 
collected. The vizir took care that the gathering should 
not be ended before the soldiers of Noureddin had reached 
Hisignomi- the frontier ; and Almeric found too late that 
mous retreat, -foe was caught in the trap which his own 
greed had laid for him. He could himself do nothing but 
retreat, and his retreat was as disastrous as it was igno- 
minious. The Greek fleet had shown itself off the mouths 
of the Nile, and had sailed away again. The Greek emperor 
could not be punished : but a scapegoat for the failure 
of the enterprise was found in the grand-master of the 
Hospitallers, who was deprived of his dignity by his 
knights. 

The triumph of Shiracouh brought with it the fall of 
the vizir Shawer, who was seized and put to death, while 
the man whose aid he had invoked was 
dhfto power chosen to fill his place. But Shiracouh him- 
m Egypt. se |£ ii ve d on iy t wo months ; and then, by way 
of choosing one whose love of pleasure and lack of in- 
fluence seemed to promise a career of useful insignificance, 
the Fatimite caliph made the young Saladin his minister. 
The caliph was mistaken. Saladin brought back his 
Koords, and so used the treasures which his office placed 



1 1 68. The Loss of Jerusalem. 99 

at his command, that the new yoke became stronger than 
the old one. 

To the Latins the exaltation of Saladin signified the 
formation of a really formidable power on their southern 
frontier. Their alarm prompted embassies to the court 
of the Eastern emperor and the princes of Western Chris- 
tendom. But the time was not yet come for a .d. 1169. 
a third crusade ; and only from Manuel was ^" e ™ P a to 
any help obtained. His fleet aided the Latins crusade, 
in a fruitless siege of Damietta ; and a terrible earthquake 
which laid Aleppo in ruins and shattered the walls of 
Antioch saved them from attack by the army of Nou- 
reddin which was approaching from the north. Still, in 
spite of conspiracies or revolutions of the old nobility, the 
power of Saladin was growing, and at length 
he dealt with the mock sovereignty of the 
Fatimites as Pepin dealt with that of the Merovingians. 
The last Fatimite sultan, then prostrate in his last illness, 
never knew that the public prayer had been Suppression 
offered in the name of the caliph of Bagdad ; of -* he r a V" . 

r o > mitecahphat 

but Saladin had the glory of ending a schism by Saladin. 
which had lasted two hundred years, and from Mostadhi, 
the vicar of the Prophet, he received the gift of a linen 
robe and two swords. 

But the healing of one schism led only to the opening 
of another. Saladin was the servant of the sultan of 
Aleppo, and he had been recognised and Quarrel be- 
confirmed in office by Mostadhi strictly on tween Saia- 
the score of this lieutenancy. But the new sultan of 
vizir of Egypt had no mind to obey any longer AIe PP°- 
the summons of his old master ; and to his threat of chas- 
tisement Saladin in his council of emirs retorted by a 
threat of war. His vehemence was cooled when his own 
father declared before the assembly that, were he so com- 
missioned by Noureddin, he would strike his son's head 



IOO The Crusades. ch. vi. 

off from his shoulders. In private, he let Saladin know that 
his mistake lay not in thinking of resistance, but in speak- 
ing of it ; and a letter sent by his advice sufficed for the 
a. d. 1 1 73. present to smooth matters over. But the time 
Noureddin °^ q u i etness could not last long. The designs 
sultan of ' of Saladin became continually more manifest, 
and Noureddin was on his way to Egypt when 
he was struck down by illness and died at Damascus. 

In the sultan of Aleppo, as in the general who had 
risen to greatness through his favour, we have a man to 
Character of whom the chronicles of the time and of later 
Noureddin. ages delighted to ascribe the magnanimity 
and simplicity of Omar. It must at the least be ad- 
mitted that the ideal of Moslem courtesy and chivalry 
is more refined and generous than that of Western Chris- 
tendom, and that the truth of the picture drawn of 
Noureddin receives some support from the enthusiastic 
eulogies of William, archbishop of Tyre. * I fear God/ 
he replied to his queen who complained that she had 
not enough even for her wants ; ' I am but the treasurer 
of the people. But I have three shops in Hems ; these 
you may take, and this is all that I have to give.' He 
made it his business to provide everywhere mosques, 
hospitals, schools, and resting places for travellers; and 
justice, it is said, was as impartially administered in his 
time as in the days of the English Alfred. 

The widow of Noureddin held the fortress of Paneas ; 
and her husband's death encouraged Almeric to under- 
take the siege. A bribe to abandon it was at first refused. 
A fortnight later it was accepted : but Almeric returned 
to Jerusalem only to die. His life had lasted only five 
a.d. 1173. years longer than that of his predecessor Bald- 
km d of 1 IV ' w * n ' k ut it nac * teen long enough to win for 
Jerusalem. him a reputation for consummate avarice and 
meanness. His son and successor, Baldwin IV., was a 



1 1 73-1 186. TJie Loss of Jerusalem. I o I 

leper ; and his disease made such rapid strides as to 
make it necessary to delegate his authority to another. 
His first choice fell on Guy of Lusignan, the husband of 
his sister Sibylla ; but either the weakness of Guy or the 
quarrels of the barons brought everything into confusion, 
and Baldwin, foiled in his wish to annul his 
marriage, devised his crown to Baldwin, the AD ' " 3 ' 
infant son of Sibylla by her first marriage, Raymond II., 
count of Tripoli, being nominated regent and Joceline 
of Courtenay the guardian of the child. But within three 
years the leper king died, followed soon after a .d. u86. 
by the infant Baldwin V. ; and in the renewed j^of" V '' 
strife consequent on these events Guy of Jerusalem. 
Lusignan managed to establish himself by right of his 
wife king of Jerusalem. He was still quite A D ii86 
a young man, but he had earned for himself Guy of 
an evil name. The murderer of Patric, earl of king of jeru- 
Salisbury, he had been banished by Henry II. salem - 
from his dominions in France : and the opinion of 
those who knew him found expression in the words of 
his brother Geoffrey, ' Had they known me, the men who 
made my brother king would have made me a god.' 

Guy was king : but Raymond of Tripoli refused him 
his allegiance. Guy besieged him in Tiberias, and Ray- 
mond made a treaty with Saladin. But Pre ; 
Saladin was now minded to seize a higher of Saladin 
prey. He was master of Syria and Egypt : conquest of 
he was resolved that the Crescent should once J erusalem - 
more displace the Cross on the mosque of Omar. Pre- 
texts for the war were almost superfluous ; but he had an 
abundance of them in the ravages committed by barons 
of the Latin kingdom on the lands and the property of 
Moslems. Fifty thousand horsemen and a vast army on 
foot gathered under his standard, when he declared his 
intention of attacking Jerusalem : but their first assault 



102 The Crusades. ch. vi. 

was on the castle of Tiberias. On hearing these ominous 
tidings Raymond of Tripoli at once laid aside all thought 
of private quarrels. Hastening to Jerusalem he said that 
the safety of his own city was a very secondary matter, 
and earnestly besought Guy to confine himself to a 
strictly defensive war, which would soon reduce the in- 
vader to the extremity of distress. The advice was wise 
and good ; but the grand-master of the Templars fastened 
on the very nobleness of his self-sacrifice and the dis- 
interestedness of his counsel as proof of some sinister 
design which they were intended to hide. 

Had it been Baldwin III. to whom he was speaking, 
the insinuation would have been thrust aside with scorn 
and disgust. To the mean mind of Guy it carried with 
it its own evidence ; and it was resolved to meet the 
Saracen on ground of his own choosing. The troops of 
ad. 1187. Saladin were already distressed by heat and 
Battle of Ti- tn i rst when they encountered the Latin army 
berias. from Jerusalem. The issue of the first day's 

fighting was undecided ; but the heat of a Syrian summer 
night was for the Christians rendered more terrible by 
the stifling smoke of woods set on fire by the orders 
of Saladin. Parched with ihirst, and well knowing that 
on the event of that day depended the preservation of 
the Holy Sepulchre, the crusaders at sunrise rushed with 
their fierce war-cries on the enemy. Before them the 
golden glory of morning lit up the radiant shores of the 
tranquil sea where the Galilsean fishermen had heard 
from the lips of Jesus of Nazareth the words of life. But 
nearer still was a memorial yet more holy, a pledge of 
divine favour yet more assuring. On a hillock hard by was 
raised the relic of the true cross, and this hillock was many 
times a rallying point during this bloody day. There was 
little of generalship perhaps on either side; and where 
men are left to mere hard fighting, numbers must deter- 



u87- The Loss of Jerusalem. 103 

mine the issue. The hosts of Saladin far outnumbered 
those of the Latin chiefs ; and for these re- c apture of 
treat ended in massacre. The king and the GuyofLu- 
grand-master of the Templars were taken Slgnan- 
prisoners ; the holy relic which had spurred Loss of the 
them on to desperate exertion fell into the truecross - 
hands of the infidels. 

The victory of Saladin was rich in its fruits. Tiberias 
was taken. Berytos, Acre, Cassarea, Jaffa opened their 
gates; Tyre alone was saved by the heroism Fruits of the 
of Conrad of Montferrat, brother of the first victory of 
husband of queen Sibylla. Not caring to 
undertake a regular siege, Saladin marched to Ascalon, 
and offered its defenders an honourable peace, which after 
some hesitation was accepted. 

The rejection of Raymond's advice had left Jerusalem 
practically at the mercy of Saladin. It was crowded 
with people : but the garrison was scanty, Si and 
and the armies which should have defended fall of jeru- 
it were gone. Their presence would not, pro- 
bably, have availed to give a different issue to the siege ; 
but it must have added fearfully to its horrors. Saladin 
had made up his mind that the Latin kingdom must fall, 
and he would have fought on until either he or his 
enemies could fight no longer. Numbers, wealth, re- 
sources, military skill, instruments of war, all combined 
to give him advantages before which mere bravery must 
sooner or later go down ; and protracted resistance 
meant nothing more than the infliction of useless misery. 
Saladin may have been neither a saint nor a hero ; but it 
cannot be denied that his temper was less fierce and his 
language more generous than that of the Christians who 
under Godfrey had deluged the city with blood. He 
had no wish, he said, so to .defile a place hallowed by its 
associations for Moslems as well as Christians, and if the 



1 04 The Crusades. ch. vi. 

city were surrendered, he pledged himself not merely to 
furnish the inhabitants with the money which they might 
need, but even to provide them with new homes in Syria. 
But superstition and obstinacy are to all intents and pur- 
poses words of the same meaning. The offer, honourable 
to him who made and carrying no ignominy to those who 
might accept it, was rejected, and Saladin made a vow 
that entering the city as an armed conqueror he would 
offer up within it a sacrifice as awful as that by which the 
crusaders had celebrated their loathsome triumph. Most 
happily for others, most nobly for himself, he failed to 
keep this vow to the letter. Fourteen days sufficed to 
bring the siege to an end. The Christians had done 
what they could to destroy the military engines of 
their enemies ; the golden ornaments of the churches 
had been melted down and turned into money ; but 
no solid advantage was gained by all their efforts. 
The conviction of the Christian that death brought 
salvation to the champions of the cross, the assurance 
of the Moslem that to those who fell fighting for the 
creed of Islam the gates of paradise were at once opened, 
only added to the desperation of the combatants and to 
the fearfulness of the carnage. At length the besieged 
discovered that the walls near the gate of St. Stephen had 
been undermined, and at once they abandoned all hope 
of safety except from miraculous intervention. Clergy 
and laity crowded into the churches, their fears quickened 
by the knowledge that the Greeks within the city were 
treating with the enemy. The remembrance of Saladin's 
offer now came back with more persuasive power ; but to 
the envoys whom they sent the stern answer was returned 
that he was under a vow to deal with the Christians as 
Godfrey and his fellows had dealt with the Saracens. 
Yet, conscious or unconscious of the inconsistency of his 
words with the oath which he professed to have sworn, he 



1187. The Loss of Jerusalem. 105 

promised them his mercy if they would at once surrender 
the city. The besieged resolved to trust the word of the 
conqueror, as they could not resist his power. The agree- 
ment was made that the nobles and fighting men should 
be taken to Tyre which still held out under Conrad ; that 
the Latin inhabitants should be redeemed at the rate of 
ten crowns of gold for each man, five for each woman, 
one for each child ; and that, failing this ransom, they 
should remain slaves. On the sick and the helpless he 
waged no war ; and although the Knights of the' Hospital 
were among the most determined of his enemies, he 
would allow their brethren to remain for a year in their 
attendance on the sufferers who could not be moved 
away. 

In the exasperation of a religious warfare now ex- 
tended over nearly a century these terms were very mer- 
ciful. It may be said that this mercy was Terms of the 
the right of a people who submitted to the capitulation, 
invader, and that in the days of Godfrey and Peter the 
Hermit the defenders had resisted to the last. It is enough 
to answer that the capitulation of the Latins was a super- 
fluous ceremony and that Saladin knew it to be so, while, 
if the same submission had been offered to the first cru- 
saders, it would have been sternly and fiercely refused. 

Four days were allowed to the people to prepare 
for their departure. On the fifth they passed through 
the camp of the enemy, the women carrying Departure of 
or leading their children, the men bearing fl^Se 115 
such of their household goods as they were Holy City, 
able to move. On the approach of the queen and her 
ladies in the garb and with the gestures of suppliants 
Saladin himself came forward, and with genuine courtesy 
addressed to them words of encouragement and consola- 
tion. Cheered by his generous language, they told him 
that for their lands, their houses, and their goods they 



106 The Crusades. ch.vi. 

cared nothing. Their prayer was that he would restore 
to them their fathers, their husbands, and their brothers. 
Saladin granted their request, added his alms for those 
who had been left orphans or destitute by the war, 
and remitted a portion of the ransom appointed for 
the poor. In this way the number of those who re- 
mained unredeemed was reduced to eleven or twelve 
thousand ; and Saracenic slavery, although degrading, 
was seldom as cruel as the slavery which has but as yes/ y 
terday been extinguished by the most fearful of recent warsy/ 

The entry of Saladin into Jerusalem was accompanied 
by the usual signs of triumph. Amidst the waving of 
Entry of Sa- banners and the clash of martial music he 
ladininto advanced to the mosque of Omar on the 

Jerusalem. . _ ... . * . . . ... 

summit of which the Christian cross still 
flashed in the clear air. A wail of agony burst from the 
Christians who were present as this emblem was hurled 
down to the earth and dragged through the mire. For 
two days it underwent this indignity, while the mosque 
was purified from its defilements by streams of rosewater, 
and dedicated afresh to the worship of the One God 
adored by Islam. The crosses, the relics, the sacred 
vessels of the Christian sanctuaries, which had been 
carefully stowed away in four chests, had fallen into the 
hands of the conquerors, and it was the wish of Saladin 
to send them to the caliph of the Prophet as the proudest 
trophies of his victory. Even this wish he generously 
consented to forego. The chests were left in the keeping 
of the patriarch, and the price put upon them, 52,000 
golden byzants, was paid by Richard of England. _ 

Conrad still held out in Tyre, nor was he induced to 
Escape of surrender even when Saladin himself assailed 
Tyre under its walls, The siege was raised : and the next 

Conrad. , - . _, 

personage to appear before its gates was Guy 
of Lusignan, who, having regained his freedom, insisted 



1 1 87. The Loss of Jemsalem. 107 

on being admitted as lord of the city. The grand-master 
of the Templars seconded his demand. The reply was 
short and decisive. The people would own no other 
master than the gallant knight who had so further con- 
nobly defended them. But the escape of quests of Sa- 
Tyre had no effect on the general issue of the 
war. Town after town submitted to Saladin ; and the 
long series of his triumphs closed when he entered the 
gates of Antioch. 

Eighty-eight years had passed away since the cru- 
saders of Godfrey and Tancred had stood triumphant on 
the walls of the Holy City; and during all Causes of 
those years the Latin kingdom had seldom weakness in 
rested from wars and forays, from feuds and f Jerusa- 
dissensions of every kind. From the first it lem< 
displayed no characteristics which could give it any 
stability ; from the first it exhibited signs which foreboded 
its certain downfall. (1) It sanctified treachery, for it 
rested on the principle that no faith was to be u) Bad faith 
/ kept with the unbeliever; and the sowing of jj^fhe 2 
wind by the constant breach of solemn com- Moslem. 
pacts made them reap the whirlwind. A right of pas- 
turage round Paneas had been granted to the Mahomedans 
by Baldwin III. When the ground was covered with their 
sheep, the Christian troops burst in, murdered the shep- 
herds, and drove away their flocks, — not with the sanction, 
we may hope, of the most high-minded of the Latin 
kings of Jerusalem. (2) It recognised no title ,^ Disre . 
to property except in those who professed the gard of rights 
faith of Christ, and the power to commit ° properl 
injustice with practical impunity tended still further to 
demoralise the people. (3) It gave full play ,^ Lax mii; . 
to the passions of men in random wars and tary disci- 
petty forays, while it did nothing to keep up p me ' 
or to promote either military science or the discipline 



io8 The Crusades. ch.vi. 

without which that science becomes useless. (4) It was 
, v T , , marked by an almost total lack of statesman- 

(4) Lack of ' . 

statesman- ship. In a country so circumstanced a wise 
ship ' ruler would strain every nerve to conciliate 

the conquered people, to strengthen himself by alliances 
which should be firmly maintained and by treaties which 
should be scrupulously kept, to weaken such states as he 
might fail to win over to his friendship by anticipating 
combinations which might bring with them fatal dangers 
for his power. That the history of the Latin kingdom of 
Jerusalem presents a mournful and even ludicrous con- 
trast to this picture, it must surely be unnecessary to say. 
In the case of Egypt alone did the Latin kings show 
some sense of the course which prudence called upon 
them to take ; and even here this course was followed 
with miserable indecision and at last disgracefully aban- 

(5) General doned through mere lust of gold. (5) It had 
immorality. t0 deal with an i mm0 rality not of its own 
creating, but which in mere regard to its own safety it 
should have striven to keep well in check. No such 
efforts were made, and the words of William of Tyre 
(even if taken with a qualification), when he speaks of the 
Latin women, point to a state of things which must 

(6) Desultory involve grave and imminent peril. (6) It was 
of a th a e C cru- the misfortune of this kingdom that it was 
sades. called into being by troops of adventurers 

banded together (it cannot be said, confederated) for a 
religious rather than a political purpose ; in other words, 
for personal rather than for public ends. It started 
therefore without any principle of cohesion. The war- 
riors who engaged in the enterprise might abandon it 
when they thought that they had fulfilled the conditions 
of their vow, and although the continuance of their efforts 
was indispensably needed for the military and political 
success of the undertaking. (7) The private and per- 



j lS7 The L oss of Jerusalem. 1 09 

sonal character of these enterprises led to the perpetua- 
tion and multiplication of private and personal ( 7 ) Quarrels 
interests, and thus to the endless divisions ^ e d L a "? n sof 
and feuds between the barons of the kingdom, chiefs, 
which were a constant scandal and menace and which 
led frequently to deliberate treachery. (8) It encouraged, 
or permitted, or was compelled to tolerate the ^ Antagon _ 
growth of societies which arrogated to them- isticjurisdic- 

& ..... , , tions of the 

selves an independent jurisdiction, and thus civil power, 
rendered impossible a central authority of Sd^S. 
sufficient coercive power. The origin of the tary orders, 
military orders may have been in the highest degree 
edifying. The Knights Templars might begin as the 
humble guardians of the Holy Places : the Knights 
Hospitallers may have been the poor brothers of St. 
John bound to the service of the sick and helpless among 
the pilgrims of the cross. But in a land where they 
might at any time encounter a merciless or at the least a 
detested enemy, they were justified in bearing arms ; the 
necessity of bearing arms involved the need of discipline ; 
and the discipline of an enthusiastic fraternity cut off 
from the world and centred upon itself cannot fail to 
become formidable. The natural strength of these orders 
was increased by immunities and privileges granted partly 
by the Latin kings of Jerusalem, but in greater part by 
the popes. The Hospitallers, as bestowing their goods 
to feed the poor and to entertain pilgrims, were freed 
from the obligation of paying tithe, or of giving heed to 
interdicts even if these were laid upon the whole country, 
while it was expressly asserted that no patriarch or prelate 
should dare to pass any sentence of excommunication 
against them. In other words, a society was called into 
existence directly antagonistic to the clergy, and an 
irreconcileable conflict of claims was the inevitable conse- 
quence. Nor can we be surprised to find the clergy com- 



1 1 o The Crusades. ch. vii. 

plaining that the knights, not content with the immunities 
secured to themselves, gave shelter to persons who, not 
belonging to their order but lying under sentence of ex- 
communication, sought to place themselves under their 
protection. But if the Knights of the Hospital had thus 
their feuds with the clergy, they had feuds still more 
bitter with the rival order of the Templars. With dif- 
ferent interests and different aims, the one sought to 
promote enterprises against which the other protested, 
or stickled about points of precedence when common 
decency called for harmonious action, or withheld its aid 
when that aid was indispensable for the very safety of the 
state. Thus we have the triple discord of the king and 
his barons struggling against the claims of the clergy, and 
the military orders in conflict with the barons and the 
clergy alike. Of a state so circumstanced the words are 
emphatically true that a house divided against itself shall 
not stand. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE THIRD CRUSADE. 



A HALO of false glory surrounds the third crusade from 
the associations v/hich connect it with the lion-hearted 
Fictitious or king °^ England. The exploits of Richard I. 
romantic have stirred to enthusiasm the dullest of 
Richard i° of chroniclers, have furnished themes for jubilant 
England. eulogies, and have shed over his life that 
glamour which cheats even sober-minded men as they 
read the story of his prototype Achilleus in the tale of 
Troy. They have done even more, for, if we may believe 
the narrative, they excited the same vehement admiration 
in his most redoubtable enemy ; and the romance of 



1 190. 



The Third Crusade. 1 1 1 



youth or even of maturer age fastens on the picture which 
exhibits the brother of Saladin in the thick of mortal 
fight as sending to him two Arabian chargers by way 
of lauding the hero for dealing wounds and death on a 
multitude of his people. 

When we turn from the picture to the reality, we 
shall see in this third crusade an enterprise in which the 
fiery zeal which does something towards re- ReaI c h arac 
deeming the savage brutalities of Godfrey and ter of the 
the first crusaders is displaced by base and thiSVru- 
sordid greed, by intrigues utterly of the earth sade - 
earthy, by wanton crimes from which we might well 
suppose that the sun would hide away its face ; and in 
the leaders of this enterprise we shall see men in whom, 
morally, there is scarcely a single quality to relieve the 
monotonous blackness of their infamy, in whom, strate- 
gically, a very little generalship comes to the aid of a blind 
brute force, and in some of whom, personally, an animal 
courage or ferocity, which fears no danger and knows no 
fatigue, surmounts a thousand difficulties and charms the 
vast multitudes who find their highest delight in the 
worship or idolatry of mere power. As a military leader 
Richard I. of England is beneath contempt when com- 
pared with the first Napoleon ; but he may fairly compete 
with him as a criminal. Alaric the Goth and Attila the 
Hun never professed to be sovereigns of a civilised 
people ; but in no sense have they a better title to be re- 
garded as scourges of mankind. 

Undertakings which depend on the temper and re- 
sources of individual men are not likely to be carried out 
with unswerving persistence; and this ebb Deca f h 
and flow of purpose and energy is especially crusading 
manifest in the history of the crusades. spiriL 
With any marked success comes a feeling of self-com- 
placency in the thought that a vow has been strictly ful- 



1 1 2 The Crusades. ch. vii. 

filled or a duty thoroughly discharged ; and the result is 
either slackness or total indifference to matters which 
thus far seemed in their importance to leave everything 
else in the shade. Assuredly there was little indeed in the 
lives of the later Latin kings of Jerusalem to keep alive 
the enthusiasm which had been roused by the preaching 
of the hermit Peter ; and for the time a change seems to 
pass over the spirit of the dream which for nearly a 
hundred years had been beguiling Western Christendom. 
The impulse (it can scarcely be dignified with the 
name of policy) which led Almeric (p. 9 ) to fix his 
thoughts on the conquest of Egypt, is the nearest approach 
to the temper of the true statesman and general exhibited 
in the history of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. It aimed 
not only at preventing a combination of hostile powers 
to the north and south fraught with fatal dangers for any 
dominion which might lie between them, but it seemed to 
promise the possession of a country of immense import- 
ance to the merchant and the trader. This advantage 
was clearly seen and eagerly aimed at by the 
third Lateran council, which insisted that 
the conquest of Damietta should be the first object of 
every crusade, the maintenance of the kingdom of Jeru- 
Changein salem at best only the second. In short, 
the character these expeditions had in strictness of speech 

of the cru- x \ . 

sades. ceased to be crusades, unless an exception is 

to be made in the case of the sainted Louis IX. of France. 
With him, as with Godfrey and the first crusaders, the 
religious motive absorbed every other, In the rest the 
professed object of the scheme is made an excuse for 
roving forays or political conquests, or is feebly carried 
out as an irksome or even repulsive task, while the har- 
mony indispensable for success is sacrificed for quarrels 
and deadly feuds which would do credit to the society of 
savages. 



1 1 79- 1 1 8 5 . The TJi ird Crusade. 1 1 3 

But until the Cross had been thrust aside for the 
Crescent on the mosque of Omar, the task of stirring up 
the Western princes for another crusade was He n of 
neither easy nor successful. The crusading England and 

. . • tt tt rr- the patriarch 

spirit was never strong in Henry II. of Eng- f Jerusa- 

land, and even after the quarrel with Becket lem- 

had come to an end with his death, he had a convenient 

excuse for staying at home in the dangers which menaced 

his dominions from the north. But with the 

captivity of his enemy William this pretext 

vanished. The Scottish king swore to hold his kingdom 

as a fief of the English crown ; and Henry, unable any 

longer to resist the arguments or entreaties of the French 

king Louis VII., promised to combine his 

forces as duke of Normandy with those of 

his liege lord for the succour of the Christians in the 

Holy Land. The death of Louis, which cut 

..... . . . . .. A.D. Il8o. 

short this design, brought no bitter dis- 
appointment to Henry ; but when, some five years later, 
Heraclius (Herakleios), patriarch of Jeru- 

i i- ■, r \ • -ii -A.D. 1 185. 

salem, kneeling before him with the count of 
Tripoli and the grand-master of the Hospitallers, placed in 
his hands the sceptre of his kinsman Fulk of Anjou and 
of the kings who had succeeded him, with the keys of the 
Holy City and the Holy Sepulchre, the English monarch 
was careful to address them in words which conveyed 
encouragement while they committed him to nothing. He 
would ask the advice of his council ; and his question 
was so put as to show clearly what he would wish the 
answer to be. He desired to know whether his duty 
called him to govern and guard his subjects at home or 
to break lances with Saracens to prop up the tottering 
sway of a distant sovereign. There was no doubt in the 
mind of his barons and prelates that the nearer work had 
a paramount call on him ; and the promise of Henry to 

1 



114 The Crusades. cava 

contribute 50.000 marks for the needs of the Latin king- 
dom in Palestine was received by the patriarch with a 
dissatisfaction which manifestly excited the king's anger. 
Not a whit abashed, Heraclius bade him deal with him- 
self as he had dealt with the martyr Thomas of Can- 
terbury, and expressed himself as not less ready to die by 
his hands than by those of the less cruel Saracens. This 
ridiculous taunt was allowed to pass without rebuke, and 
Heraclius departed unhurt after consecrating the church 
of the Knights Templars in the city of London. 

But the fall of Jerusalem cast a new colour over 
questions of policy and duty. A few days after that 
event, and in all likelihood before he could 
Death of Ur- hear of it, pope Urban III. died at Verona, 
ban in. oppressed with grief not for a disaster of 

which he was ignorant, but for the death struggle which 
seemed imminent between the papal and the imperial 
power. His successor Gregory VI 1 1., whose short ponti- 
ficate was ended in less than two months, 

Pontificate , .. , . . „ 

of Gregory bewailed the event as a catastrophe affecting 
VIIL the whole of Christendom ; but he was pro- 

bably not unconscious that for the papacy it might create 
a diversion which might rescue it from dire peril, if not 
destruction. The few days of life which remained to him 
were spent in writing letters to reawaken the spirit which 
had been roused successi /ely by the hermit Peter and the 
sainted Bernard. The divine wrath was to be appeased 
by a fast of five years, and the consciousness of shameless 
corruption and venality inspired the cardinals to promise 
that they would take no more bribes for the furtherance 
or perversion of justice, and that they would never mount 
again on horseback until the land once trodden by the 
Saviour should have ceased to be polluted by the feet of 
the unbeliever. 

Pope Gregory died on a journey undertaken for the 



1 1 74- n 88. The Third Crusade. 115 

purpose of making peace between the republics of Genoa 
and Pisa, whose fleets were of the first import- A . D . XI 8s. 
ance for the carrying- out of the scheme which Assumption 

J ° 01 the cross 

he had at heart. A few weeks later the broad by Henry II. 
plain between Gisors and Trie witnessed the Augustusof 
meeting of Henry of England and Philip Augus- Fran ce. 
tus the young French king, to hear the cause of the Chris- 
tians in Palestine pleaded by William, archbishop of Tyre, 
the historian of the first and second crusades. The two 
sovereigns assumed the cross, and their example was fol- 
lowed by the count of Champagne, the count of Flanders, 
and a crowd of barons and knights. It was agreed that 
the English cross should be white, and the Flemish green, 
the French retaining the red. Henry hastened to England, 
and obtained from a council held at Geddington in North- 
amptonshire the imposition of a tax called the Saladin 
tithe. Every one who refused to join the Saladin tax- 
crusade was to pay a tenth of all his goods or tenth - 
movable or immovable. The sum thus raised was 
70,000/.; but it is astonishing to learn that a sum almost as 
large, 60,000/., was extorted from the scanty company of 
Jews settled in England. Whether the burden pressed 
heavily upon them, we cannot tell. Worse things were 
in store for them before many months should have passed 
away. 

It is possible that Henry may now have really intended 
to fulfil a promise with which thus far he had only dallied. 
He sent messengers to the Hungarian king 
Bela, and Isaac Angelus, the Eastern empe- family S 
ror, to request a safe transit and free market Henr >' n - 
for his followers. The demand was granted; but Henry 
now had other concerns to occupy him. The wretched 
quarrels which were an inevitable consequence of petty 
principalities and the complicated tenures of feudalism 



1 1 6 The Crusades. 



CH. VII. 



had assumed their most hateful form among the princes 
of the house of Anjou. Of the legitimate sons of Henry II., 
Henry, Richard, and John, it is hard to say which led the 
most disgraceful life and earned the most shameful repu- 
tation. The tyranny of Richard in Aquitaine was mon- 
strous even in an age notorious for its cruelty and its 
treachery ; but it was probably no disinterested sympathy 
for his victims which brought against him the forces of 
his elder brother Henry, and of his half-brother Geoffrey, 
the son of that Rosamond Clifford into whose history the 
popular talk of that or of a later day introduced a tale 
common to the folklore of many lands. The strife was 
for the time appeased by their father, against whom these 
dutiful children now turned their arms. The day fixed 
for the battle was drawing nigh when the 
young prince or king Henry (he had been 
crowned A.D. 1169 by the bishops excommunicated by 
Thomas of Canterbury shortly before his martyrdom) was 
cut off by a sudden attack of fever ; and Richard, as 
the eldest surviving son, looked on himself as heir to 
the crown of England, But it soon became plain that 
the affections of his father were fixed on his younger son 
John, one of the most despicable of cowards and most 
contemptible of traitors. The discovery led Richard to 
renew his intimacy with the French king Philip Augustus, 
to whose sister Adelais or Alix he had long since been 
betrothed. That princess had passed into the custody of 
the English king, and had, it was said, borne him a child; 
but of this Richard for the present took no count, as, 
backed by Philip Augustus, he insisted on 
her surrender and on receiving the fealty of 
the barons as his father's heir-apparent. On this second 
point the king's answer was ambiguous ; and Richard, 
exclaiming indignantly that he now believed what before 
he had thought impossible, knelt down at the feet of 



nS8. The Third Crusade. WJ 

Philip, and, demanding from him protection in his just 

rights, did homage to him for all his father's dominions 

in France. In the war which followed Henry was driven 

from his castles of Mans, Amboise, and Tours. His body 

was wasted with disease, and he was induced to meet his 

son and the French king on a plain near 

, ,. • A - D - 1189. 
Tours. A thunderstorm, in which the lightning 

twice fell near them, unnerved him still more. He agreed 
to pay 20,000 marks to Philip, to surrender Adelais, and to 
allow his vassals to swear fealty to Richard, and asked 
only to see the list of the names of barons who had joined 
the confederacy of the French king. At the a .d. 1189. 
head was the name of his own son John. He ^l th of 
read no further. A raging fever came on, Henry II. 
during which he heaped curses on his unnatural children; 
and in a week he died. 

Richard was now king of England ; but he was not 
the man to fix his thoughts on the wider schemes which 
had filled the mind of his father. The power Preparations 
and wealth of his kingdom were things to be foV^cru- 1 ' 
used for spreading his own renown, and this sade. 
renown could be won and extended nowhere so well as in 
the Holy Land, and in no other way so gloriously as in 
cleaving the bodies of unbelievers with his deadly broad- 
sword. It was the ambition of a ruffian, gilded ovet 
with a thin varnish borrowed from the chivalry of Tan- 
cred (p. 44) ; and he proceeded to gratify it at the ex- 
pense of the real interests whether of the kingdom or of 
himself. The sum which he. needed for his enterprise far 
exceeded the 100,000 marks which his father's greed or eco- 
nomy had amassed in the treasury at Salisbury. jj odes f 
Richard sold the earldom of Northumberland raising mo- 
for 1,000/. to the bishop of Durham for the 
term of his life : for 3,000/. he received into favour his brother 
Geoffrey, now archbishop of York : for 10,000/. he resigned 



1 1 3 The Crusades. en. vn. 

to William the Scottish king all the rights over Scotland 
which the latter had conceded to Henry, together with the 
castles of Roxburgh and Berwick ; and then departed for 
Normandy on the same errand of plunder and exaction. 

Both the first and the second crusade had been 
marked at their outset by persecutions and massacres of 
Persecution the Jews. The third was to furnish no excep- 
and mas- ti The j ews f England felt probably that 

sacreofjews J & r J 

in England, a storm was gathering, and they hastened to 
conciliate the king with costly presents. Their eagerness 
unhappily outran their discretion. Richard, knowing the 
feeling of the people, had ordered that no Jews should 
appear before him on the coronation day. Disregarding 
this command, some of them, mingling with the crowd, 
entered the palace, were thrust out by the mob, and mur- 
dered. The fire, thus kindled, spread furiously. Every 
Jew in the streets was cut down ; every house belonging 
to a Jew was plundered and burnt. Some attempt was 
made to check the slaughter. Three men were hanged ; 
but they were charged, not with murdering Jews, but with 
robbing Christians under pretence that they were Jews, 
or with setting houses on fire to the danger or hurt of the 
property of Christians. The iniquity was not confined to 
London. The same things were done in all the great cities. 
At York, as at Lincoln, the wealthy Jews hurried with their 
Fearful goods into the castle. At Lincoln they found 

tragedy in safety : at York they unhappily interpreted the 
departure of the governor from the castle as 
a sign that he was plotting against them with the Christians 
of the town, and closed the gates against him on his return. 
In his anger he induced the sheriff of the county to order 
his armed bands to the assault : and these were joined by 
the populace whose fury showed at once that they meant 
much more than the mere recovery of the castle. The 
besieged could hear the fierce cry of a canon regular, of 



ngg. The Third Crusade. 119 

the Premonstratensian order, who hounded on the mob to 
1 destroy the enemies of Christ.' They knew that their doom 
was sealed ; but if they must die, they might still choose 
the mode of their death. 'In a council summoned to debate 
the matter, the rabbi urged that they should avoid frightful 
insults and barbarous torments for their wives and chil- 
dren as well as for themselves by voluntarily rendering up 
their souls to the Creator, and falling by their own hands. 
The deed, he urged, was both reasonable and sanctioned 
by their law, as well as made famous by the men who in 
the deadly struggle between Jerusalem and Rome had slain 
themselves at Massada. To some his counsel seemed wise, 
to others a hard saying. The rabbi cut the discussion short 
by bidding all to depart in peace who could not approve his 
counsel. A few only left the chamber. In a few hours the 
work of death was done, and the castle was left in flames. 
The few, who could not summon courage to follow the ex- 
ample of their brethren, offered from the walls to open 
the gates and submit to baptism, if their lives should be 
spared. The terms were granted and the surrender was 
made; and by way of keeping faith the Christians rushing 
in slaughtered every living thing within the walls. These 
were venial offences ; but the men of York added to them 
an act which was a real crime, and one of the deepest 
dye, in the eyes of king Richard. They hastened to the 
cathedral, and seizing on all the bonds and obligations 
which had been laid up in the archives burnt them in the 
nave. These bonds on the death of those who held them 
would all have escheated to the king ; and the bishop of 
Ely, the chancellor, was commissioned to search out and 
punish the offenders. But the ringleaders had made their 
es.cape across the Scottish border ; and justice even in 
the matter of the robber}' was baffled. 

Richard, having filled his coffers so far as he could, 
met Philip Augustus at Vezelai where, forty-four years be- 



120 The Crusades. ch. vn, 

fore, the pleadings of St. Bernard had seemed to stir the 
a.d. 1 1 90. heart of Christendom to efforts which must 
Meeting of be successful. The voice which now had 

Richard and . _ . 

Philip at most power was not that of the priest, the 

Vezeiai. hermit, or the saint. It was that of the trou- 

influenc^of ^adour ; and if for the present his harp might 
the trouba- be attuned to lofty measures, and his words 
might convey lessons almost as austere as 
those of pope Urban II., there was at least the danger 
that a very moderate measure of success might lead the 
minstrel to arouse emotions of a less devout sort and 
tempt his hearers to less exalted delights than those of 
prayer and meditation. The forces of the two kings 
amounted, it is said, to 100,000 men. The discipline 
which kept them together may be pictured from the rules 
which enacted that murderers should be tied to the bodies 
of their victims and hurled into the sea, that they who 
drew their swords in anger should lose their hands, and 
that thieves should be tarred and feathered and in that 
plight put on shore. 

While Philip and Richard were on their way to Sicily, 
Frederick I., emperor of the West, commonly known as 
March of Barbarossa or Red Beard, was on his way 
Frederick I. t Constantinople. He had fought a long 

Barbarossa . r & *> 

to Constan- battle with the pope or the man who called 
tmople. himself pope. He had himself set up an 

anti-pope, as the imperialist popes were called ; and 
with the sanction of this anti-pope, who styled himself 
Pascal III., he had attacked Rome, beaten down the gates 
of St. Peter's with hatchets and axes, and seen his troops 
advance filling the church with blood as they fought their 
™ way to the high altar. In the midst of 

The popes ' ° 

and the em- this carnage Pascal III. had placed the 
pire ' crown on the head of the empress Beatrice, 

and had blessed again the diadem of' Frederick. He 



1190. The Third Crusade. 121 

had had to contend with a mightier enemy than the 
pope in the fearful pestilence which broke out within his 
camp ; and his flight from Rome had ensured the victory 
of pope Alexander III., the somewhat hesitating friend of 
Thomas of Canterbury. But although the warfare of 
previous years was succeeded by an apparent peace, 
Frederick lost no opportunity of strengthening himself 
against the papacy ; and in the days of Urban III. he 
had gained much by securing for his son Henry the hand 
of Constantia, heiress of the kingdom of Sicily. The old 
strife might have been renewed ; but the heart of Barba- 
rossa was stirred by the tidings from the Holy Land or 
the letters of Gregory VIII., and his armies advanced 
under his standard through Hungary towards the capital 
of the Eastern empire. That capital Barbarossa, like 
his predecessor Conrad (p. 90), refused to enter. The 
Byzantine Csesar had with scant courtesy allowed him the 
privilege of buying food for his men ; he had studiously 
withheld from him the titles which implied a divided 
empire. 

The steadier discipline, the more decent order which 
marked the army of Barbarossa seemed to promise a 
better result to his enterprise. They had De ath of 
defeated the Turks in a general battle, and Frederick 1. 
had taken the Seljukian capital of Cogni (Iconium), 
(p. 79) ; but a great disaster, nothing less than the loss of 
their leader himself, awaited them. Frederick was 
drowned in a Pisidian river, — as some said, 
while he was crossing it ; as others had it, 
from the effects of bathing. The misery and suffering 
which had fallen to the lot of the earlier crusaders now 
weighed heavily upon them : and the wretched 
story is sufficiently told, if it be true that not tion°of Upa ~ 
a tenth of the number which crossed the Antloch - 
Bosporos lived to enter Antioch. The few who made 



122 The Crusades. ch.vii. 

their way thus far found a city almost deserted by the 
Turkish soldiers, and Antioch once more had a Christian 
government. 

But while the sovereigns of the West were thus pre- 
paring for another great effort on their behalf, the Latins 
a d n8 °f P a l estme were struggling hard to win back 

Siege of their lost supremacy, and were aided by crowds 

of armed pilgrims, whose immense numbers 
have to be taken into account if we wish to realise the extent 
of the drain to which the population of Europe was thus 
subjected. Too impatient to wait, these wanderers hurried, 
with whatever motives, to the scenes where, as they sup- 
posed, honour could not fail to be won, even if wealth 
and happiness should not be their portion. The conflict 
now turned on the possession of Acre, the key of the whole 
region lying to the west of the Jordan. It had opened 
its gates to Saladin soon after the battle of Tiberias ; 
and before Richard of England and Philip Augustus set 
foot on the Holy Land it had been besieged for nearly 
two years by Guy of Lusignan, titular king of Jerusalem, 
with an army which the influx of pilgrims from Europe 
had raised, it is said, to 100,000 men. But the besiegers 
had little generalship, and the mischief done to 
their effectiveness by vice and debauchery was completed 
by a fearful pestilence which swept them away by thou- 
sands. 

In the midst of this misery a few German merchants* 
from the coasts of the Baltic, sought to mitigate suffering 
by running up the sails of their ships as tents 
Teutonic 6 for the sick and dying. The happy results 
order. which followed their work led to an organisa- 

tion similar to that of the orders of the Temple and the 
Hospital. Like those orders, the Teutonic knights rose to 
power and distinction, and in the history of the crusade of 
Frederick II. we shall find their grand-master, Herman of 



1 1 90. 



The Third Crusade. 123 



Salza, in high favour both with the emperor and with the 
pope, his implacable antagonist. With the failure of the 
crusades in the East the order was transferred to the more 
forbidding regions which had sent forth its founders, and 
their crusade was turned against the heathen of the 
Lithuanian, Prussian, Esthonian, and other tribes. They 
preached the gospel with the sword, and their efforts 
were followed at least by military success. Their grasp 
on the lands which they overran was never relaxed, and 
the last grand-master became the sovereign of a state 
which has grown into the modern kingdom of Prussia. 

The sickness and vice which wasted the forces of the 
crusaders before Acre were powerfully aided by feuds 
among the chiefs. Sibylla, the sister of Bald- A D o 
win IV., and wife of Guy of Lusignan, was P. eath of 

• , rr 1 , , TT , .,\ Sibylla, 

carried off by the plague. Her two children queen of 
died with her, and her husband found himself J erusalem - 
stripped of the privilege which had made him at least the 
shadow of a king. Isabel, the sister of his wife, still 
lived, and having got rid of her first husband Humphry, 
lord of Thoron, was now married to Conrad, marquis of 
Tyre. As thus wedded to the heiress of Al- Conrad, 
meric, Conrad claimed the sovereignty of tlC " larkin g 

' _ o J ofjeru- 

Jerusalem, and the decision of the point was saiem. 
reserved for the kings of England and France. 

These kings were now on their way to the East. 
Richard had journeyed by land to Genoa, while his fleet, 
having crossed the bay of Biscay, anchored voyage of 
at Lisbon, where his forces found a crusade the English 
ready to their hands. The town of Santarem, bon and 1S 
forty miles above Lisbon, was blockaded by Messma - 
the Saracen emir. With the aid of the English the Por- 
tuguese raised the siege and then found themselves com- 
pelled to fight with their deliverers in the streets of Lisbon. 
The crusaders thought that they carried with them a 



124 Tlie Crusades. ch. vn. 

license for universal plunder and insult ; and it was not 
without difficulty and much bloodshed that they were 
persuaded by their leaders to reserve the application of 
their theory for more distant lands. The summer was 
a.d. 1 190. coming to an end when Richard, having 
Sept. 23. joined his fleet on the Italian coast, entered 
Messina almost in the guise of a conqueror, to the terror 
of the Sicilians and the disgust of the French king 
Philip. 

Then, as through almost the whole of its chequered 
history, Sicily was a prize for which contending kings and 
Conduct of adventurers intrigued, or fought. It was now 
Richard I. held by Tancred, an illegitimate son of the 
Apulian duke Roger. His sister Constantia, 
the legitimate daughter of Roger, was the wife of Henry, 
son of Frederick Barbarossa, who wished to make the 
island a portion of his own imperial realm (p. 121). Hewas 
foiled by Tancred, who took the further precaution of im- 
prisoning Joanna, the widow of his predecessor William 
called the Good. Joanna was the sister of the English 
Richard, who was not slow in demanding her freedom, 
her dower, and the legacies which William the Good had 
left to his father Henry II. His demands were accom- 
panied by robbery and violence, and his followers has- 
tened to imitate his example. They came to open strife 
with the people in the streets of Messina ; and the battle 
was followed by the plundering of the town. But the 
raising of the English standard on the walls was inter- 
preted as an insult by Philip Augustus, and Richard was 
constrained to appease his wrath by placing the city in the 
charge of the Knights Templars and Hospitallers. 
Quarrel be- The dispute with Tancred was made up 

tween by the betrothal of his infant daughter to 

Phdi^Au" Arthur, duke of Brittany, that luckless victim 
gustus. f t i ie cru elty of John whom Shakspeare has 



[90. 



The Third Crusade. 1 2 5 



made famous. But the quarrels of these champions of 
the cross are tangled like links in a twisted chain. By 
way of showing his friendly feeling, Tancred placed in 
Richard's hand a letter bearing the signature of the 
French king and inviting Tancred to a private alliance 
against Richard. The latter charged Philip Augustus 
with the treachery, and was charged in turn with produ- 
cing forged letters by way of devising an escape from his 
engagement with his sister Adelais. Richard had offered 
to marry Berengaria, daughter of Sancho king of Navarre, 
and with studied coarseness he told Philip that he could 
have nothing to do with the mother of his father's child. 
So was changed into fixed hatred that alliance which in 
its early days had led them to eat at the same table and 
rest in the same bed. 

Thus passed away the winter in disgraceful quarrels and 
in lavish outlays of money scarcely less disgraceful. In 
the spring the French king sailed for Acre. 

r & o A.D. II91. 

Richard went to Rhodes, and while he re- March, 
mained there sick, he heard that some of his tween Rich- 
people had been wrecked on the coast of Cy- l rd and the 

r r J Comnenian 

prus, robbed of their goods, and imprisoned emperor of 
by Isaac the Comnenian prince who called yprUb ' 
himself emperor of the island. His demand for compen- 
sation was unheeded. The English fleet appeared before 
Limasol, the southernmost town of the island : and the 
English troops were soon masters of the city. Isaac 
entered into a treaty which bound him to serve with 500 
knights in the crusade, and in the event of good behaviour 
Richard promised him the restoration of his kingdom. 
But fear got the better of his prudence. He made his 
escape, and again met the English king in battle. The 
fight was followed by his surrender, and Richard ordered 
him to be kept in a castle on the coast of Palestine. 

Here, in the town which under the name of Paphos 



126 The Crusades. ch.vii. 

had won for itself a pre-eminence in vice and folly, Richard 
was married to Berengaria of Navarre. Here also he 
received and promised to take up the cause of Guy of 
Lusignan, the weightiest argument for so doing being 
found in the fact that Philip Augustus had taken up 
that of Conrad. Thus the two kings reached Acre only 
Arrival of to complicate old feuds with new strifes. The 
Phi!i ar at and s * e S e na d lasted nearly two years. In the 
Acre. plain was gathered the crusading host, still 

magnificent in its appointments : on the heights were 
assembled the Turkish armies under the black banner of 
Saladin. Richard had loitered on the road as long as it 
suited his fancy or his ambition to do so ; and he had 
overwhelmed with a torrent of reproach and abuse the 
envoys from the chiefs before Acre who dared to con- 
front him at the Cyprian Famagosta with the reproof 
that his business was not to dethrone Comnenian princes 
and take their kingdoms, but to do battle with the Turk 
for the sacred heritage of Christendom. He reached 
Acre, prostrated with intermittent fever ; but indifference 
to the enterprise had given way to a fiery zeal. He 
had himself carried out on a mattrass to point the balistas 
which by discharging stones served in some measure the 
purposes of modern artillery. But at first the two kings 
would not act together, and this division of forces enabled 
the besieged to stand out. Their reconciliation, whether 
real or seeming, led to a combined action which was 
soon rewarded by the offer of surrender. The terms now 
proposed were rejected, and Saladin cheered the besieged 
with the hope of succours to be received from Egypt. The 
help came not, and Saladin was compelled to assent to a 
harder compact. The piece of the true cross was to be 
given up, the Christian prisoners set free, and 
July 12. some thousands of hostages were to bedetained 

for the payment, within forty days, of 200,000 pieces of 



/ 



1 191. The Third Crusade. 127 

gold. The surrender was made. Richard took up his 
abode in the palace, Philip went to the house of the Tem- 
plars, and the flags of the two kings floated Surrender of 
from the ramparts. Philip now regarded him- Acre - 
self as absolved from his vow, and he announced his 
determination to return to France. Richard 
parted from his ally with undissembled anger phiS™to 
and contempt, and Philip, sailing to Tyre, France - 
gave to Conrad that half of the city of Acre which had 
been reserved for himself. 

The forty days were on. Saladin would net or could 
not restore the relics of the true cross or make up the 
200,000 pieces. Richard warned him what 
the consequences of neglect would be ; and j.^Turk- 
he kept his word. On the fortieth day two ish hosta § es - 
thousand seven hundred hostages were led to the top of 
a hill from which all that passed might be seen in the 
camp of Saladin ; and at a signal from the king these two 
thousand seven hundred infidels were all cut down. The 
soldiers hacked open their bodies to search for the jewels 
and gold which they were supposed to have swallowed, 
and to obtain the gall which they kept as medicine. In 
such praiseworthy deeds as these the Christians could act 
with admirable concert. At the same hour hostages 
almost equalling in number the victims of Richard were 
slaughtered on the walls of the city by the duke of Bur- 
gundy, the representative of Philip Augustus. 

The recovery of Acre was for these merciful and 
devout champions of the cross a sufficient reason for 
plunging into beastly debauchery and excess, from which 
it was no easy task to tear them away. At length the 
army of Richard moved southwards, marching in compact 
array along the coast, while the fleet, generally in sight, 
advanced along the shore. On their left hung the 
hosts of Saladin, whose policy it was to wear out his 



128 The Crusades. ch. vn. 

enemy, in a country the fortresses of which he had dis- 
mantled, without fighting any pitched battles. In this 
way the crusaders and their enemies had reached the 
neighbourhood of Azotus (Ashdod), when Richard re- 
solved to face his adversary. The right wing was under 
Jacob of Avesnes ; the left was held by the duke of 
Burgundy; the English king was in the centre. 

Victory of _.,... r . 

Richard at The disposition of the battle showed some 
Azotus. approach to generalship on his part ; and his 

coolness was seen in the steadiness with which he reserved 
for the decisive moment the charge of his horsemen. 
Their tremendous onset broke the Turkish ranks. The 
victory was decisive : but it was purchased with the 
death of Jacob of Avesnes, which Richard mourned as a 
costly sacrifice. 

His next move was to Jaffa, although he had wished 
to go on to Ascalon. The French barons insisted on the 
Abortive ne- necessity of rebuilding the walls of Jaffa : 
wtlfsafa- and in s P ite of the sluggishness which with 
din. the crusaders almost always followed strenuous 

exertion, the task was at length completed. Richard 
resolved to renew the war with vigour, and announced to 
Saladin that nothing less would content him than the 
surrender of all the territory which had been included in 
the kingdom of Jerusalem under Baldwin the leper (p. 101). 
Saladin replied by an offer to yield up all lands lying 
between the Jordan and the sea : but it soon became 
clear that the negotiations were a mere pretext for gaining 
a.d. 1 191. time, and Richard determined to advance 
November. U p 0n Jerusalem. The army reached Ramlah, 
encountering some hardships from rain and tempests. 
Still it seemed that they might soon win the prize to which 
they had looked forward as the adequate recompense of 
all human toil. It was not to be so, and the hindrance 
came from the military orders and from the men of Pisa. 






i9i. 



The Third Crusade. 129 



These asserted that the reconquest of Jerusalem would 
be the dissolution of the enterprise. The army would 
never be kept together, so soon as they had once paid 
their vows before the tomb of the Redeemer. The 
crusaders fell back to Ascalon, and there the winter was 
spent partly in restoring the fortifications, but for the 
more part in incessant feuds. The duke of Austria had 
learnt during the siege of Acre to look on Richard as an 
enemy. The cause, it was said, was an Feudbe- 
insult done to the Austrian banner, which tween the 

-r> • 1 i • j ,1 English kino 

Richard, on seeing it raised upon the ramparts, and the duke 
seized and flung into the ditch. The hatred of Austna - 
thus excited was embittered, we are told, by the injunction 
or desire for the personal help of all in the camp for the 
rebuilding of the walls of Ascalon. The duke replied 
that he was neither a mason nor a carpenter ; and the 
lion-hearted king retorted by a kick which threw him 
down. This may be romance or fiction : but the dis- 
organisation of the force is sufficiently shown by the facts 
that the claim of Conrad to the throne of Jerusalem was 
urged by the Genoese, that of Guy by the men of Pisa ; 
that the French abandoned the camp because Richard 
was no longer able to pay them ; and that the jealousy 
of Conrad could be satisfied with nothing less than an 
alliance with Saladin. The end had almost come. 
Richard knew that his presence in England was a matter 
of life and death, and he now in his offers to the Turkish 
sultan abated his claim to the mere possession of the holy 
city and the restoration of the true cross. To this last sur- 
render Saladin had in the previous negotiations made no 
objection. He had now become more orthodox or more 
scrupulous, and he could not give even indirect encourage- 
ment to the idolatry which would worship a piece of 
wood. Nor was a treaty set on foot for the marriage of 
Richard's sister Joanna to Saphadin the sultan's brother 
K 



130 The Crusades. ch.vii. 

more successful. The English king even consented to 
give up the cause of Guy and sanction the choice of 
Conrad of Tyre for the Latin crown. The murder of 
a.d. 1 192. Conrad by two of the fraternity known as the 
April 27. Assassins drew on Richard a storm of indig- 

nation ; but evidence for the crime there was none. A 
more popular claimant appeared in Henry, count of 
Henr of Champagne, whose election to the throne ot 
Champagne Godfrey was followed by his marriage to the 
of jerusa- g widow of Conrad. The grief of Guy was 
,em - consoled by the sovereignty of Cyprus which 

was still in the hands of his descendants when the 
Crescent in 1453 displaced the Cross on Justinian's church 
in Constantinople. • 

Disunion and bad generalship had practically sealed 
the doom of the crusade ; but for Richard the capture of 
March of Jerusalem still had greater charms than the 
Richardto- punishment of his brother John. In June, 
saiem. accordingly, the army once more began its 

march to the Holy City. The tidings of his approach 
caused almost panic terror among the Turks ; but when 
they had reached Bethlehem the crusaders discovered 
that their forces were insufficient for the. investment of 
the city; that to a commissariat they could scarcely make 
a pretence; that they ran an imminent risk of being cut 
off from their base of supplies ; and, lastly, that the 
Turks had destroyed the wells and cisterns for miles 
round. It was impossible to resist the logic of these 
facts ; and Richard made a last desperate effort to divert 
their joint forces to an invasion of Egypt and the attack 
of Cairo. He was led up a hill from which he was told 
Retreat of that he might see Jerusalem : he held up his 
the army shield before his face as being unworthy to 

from Beth- . ° J 

lehem. behold the city which he had failed to wrest 

from the power of the infidel. The army was broken up. 



1 192. 



The Third Crusade. 1 3 1 



Some went to Jaffa, more to Acre ; and Saladin, ad- 
vancing with rapid marches to the former city, so pressed 
it that the besieged pledged themselves to surrender if 
within twenty-four hours they should not be effectually 
succoured. Within that time Richard appeared upon the 
scene. His onset was more fierce, his valour and exploits 
more astonishing than ever. The besiegers Relief of 
retreated in confusion, to learn presently with - ,aruu 
greater shame that they had been scared by a mere 
handful of Christian horsemen. But if the splendid 
bravery of the English king struck terror into the multi- 
tude, there were not lacking some, it is said, in which it 
excited a chivalrous admiration. Richard was dismounted, I 
we are told, in the thick of the fight, and Saladin's brother 
K Saphadin, whose son Richard had at his request knighted, 
sent him two horses to enable him to renew the struggle. 
The crusaders were victorious : but Richard had no wish 
to use the advantage thus gained except for the purpose 
of gaining the best terms from the enemy. The compact 
ultimately made pledged them to a truce of Truce be- 
three years and eight months. Ascalon was tween the 

J ° crusaders 

to be dismantled : but the Christians were to and Saladin. 
remain in possession of Jaffa and Tyre with the country 
between them ; and all pilgrims were to have the right of 
entering Jerusalem untaxed. 

Of this privilege the French at Acre desired to avail 
themselves. Richard indignantly refused their request. 
They had done nothing to secure the peace Rwima e 
or to deserve it ; and their allies only should to Jem- & 
be suffered to enter the Sacred City. Among sa em ' 
these pilgrims was the bishop of Salisbury, who became 
the guest of Saladin and heard from his lips praises of 
the valour of Richard which were not extended to his 
generalship. The thrust was rather evaded than parried 
by the reply that the earth could not produce two warriors 

K 2 



132 The Crusades. ch.vil 

who could be put into comparison with the Syrian sultan 
and the English king. 

So ended the third crusade, with its work barely more 
than begun, or rather marred by the infatuated waste of 
Results of splendid opportunities ; yet not with an extre- 
me third mity of humiliation which would convince 

even devotees of the absurdity of further 
efforts. A large strip of coast bounded by two important 
cities still remained as a base of operations in any re- 
newed contest, and much had been done to neutralise 
the effects which without doubt Saladin had anticipated 
from his victory at Tiberias and his conquest of Jeru- 
salem. 

On the morning after his embarkation at Acre, Richard 
turned to take a last look on the fading shores of Pales- 
Ca tivit of tme - ' M° st h°ly l an( V he exclaimed with 
Richard I. outstretched arms, ' I commend thee to the 

care of the Almighty ! May He grant me life 
to return and deliver thee from the yoke of the infidels !' 
His fleet, carrying his wife and his sister, had preceded 
him and reached Sicily in safety. He himself followed 
in a single ship, and at the end of a month of baffling 
winds found himself at Corfu, where he hired some trad- 
ing vessels to take him to Ragusa and Zara. Sailing on, 
he was thrown by a storm on the Istrian coast between 
Aquileia and Venice, when the perils of his situation must 
have begun to force themselves upon him. The kinsfolk 
of Conrad of Tyre bore no love for his supposed murderer ; 
the French king was in treaty with his brother John ; and 
Henry VI., the emperor of Germany, and son of Barba- 
rossa, owed him a grudge for his alliance with Tancred of 
Sicily (p. 124). Still Richard thought, it seems, that a 
pilgrim's disguise and an unshorn beard would carry him 
through all dangers. Having reached the fortress of 
Goritz, which was held by Maynard, a nephew of Conrad, 



II9 2. „ The Third Crusade. ^ 133 

he sent his companion, Baldwin of^-Bethune, with the 
gift of a ruby ring, to ask a passport for himself and Hugh 
the merchant, pilgrims goin^riome from Jerusalem. May- 
nard looked long at the^fby, and at length said, ' This 
jewel can come only/from a king ; that king must be 
Richard of England. Tell him he may come to me in 
peace.' Not trusting his promise, Richard fled during 
the night. Baldwin and seven others who remained 
with him were seized and kept as hostages. At Freisach 
six more of his companions were taken, although Richard 
himself escaped with one knight and a boy who knew the 
language of the country. This boy, sent to the market 
at Erperg, near Vienna, showed his money too freely, was 
caught, put to the torture, and revealed the name of his 
master. Surrounded in his house by troops of armed 
men, Richard refused to yield except to their a .d. 1192. 
chief ; and that chief hastened to take charge Dec - "■ 
of him. It was Leopold, who may have felt that he could 
now taste the sweets of revenge for the insults (whatever 
these may have been) which Richard had put upon him 
in Palestine. But Leopold was induced to compound with 
his feelings by a bribe of 60,000/. ; and Richard, as the 
prisoner of Henry VI., was closely guarded in a Tyrolese 
castle. 

The tidings of his captivity were received with sorrow 
by his subjects generally, with undissembled joy by his 
brother John and Philip Augustus of France. A D t 
Of these two princes the former prepared to ^"j^ h 
fight for the crown, and after the first reverse liberation of 
accepted an armistice : the latter, having Rlchard - 
sent to Richard to renounce his allegiance, invaded Nor- 
mandy, and met with a complete repulse at Rouen. At 
length the place of Richard's imprisonment was dis- 
covered by William Longchamp, bishop of Ely, the 
English chancellor ; or, as the romance would have it, by 



134 The Crusades. 



CII. VII. 



his faithful minstrel Blondel. The pope was at once 
assailed with entreaties to come forward for his rescue. 
Peter of Blois, archdeacon of Bath, reminded Cselestine 
III. of his debt of gratitude to so faithful a son of the 
Church. His mother Eleanor wrote to him in less mea- 
sured terms. Where, she asked, was the zeal of Elijah 
against Ahab, of John the Baptist against Herod, of 
Alexander III. against the father of the emperor who 
had wrought this iniquity in Christendom ? « For trifling 
reasons your cardinals are sent in all their power to the 
most savage lands ; in this great cause you have appointed 
not even a subdeacon or an acolyth. You would not 
have much debased the dignity of the holy see had you 
set out in person to rescue him. Restore to me my son, 
O man of God, if thou art indeed a man of God and not 
a man of blood. If you remain lukewarm, the Most High 
may require his blood at your hands.' In later letters she 
asks him if he thinks that his soul can be safe while he is 
thus slack in rescuing the sheep of his fold, and tells him 
that he ought to be willing to lay down his life for one in 
whose behalf he was unwilling to speak or write a single 
word. The truth is that Cadestine was full of zeal for 
Richard's cause : he was only waiting with true papal 
caution for Richard's deliverance to express his zeal em- 
phatically. 

At length, after nearly four months, Richard was 
brought before the diet at Hagenau. The captive might 
Richard be- have pleaded the incompetence of the tribu- 
at r Hage- diet nal 5 he chose to answer the charges brought 
nau - against him with arguments which convinced 

his judges of his innocence and made the emperor willing 
to treat about his ransom. This ransom was raised by 
new taxes laid on his subjects, whose resources, even 
when taxed to the uttermost, seemed unlikely to satisfy 
imperial avarice ; and there was the further danger that 



( 



ii94- 



The Fourth Crusade. 135 



whatever might be the sum raised, John might outbid 
them. This upright and honourable prince had offered to 
.pay to Henry VI. the sum of 20,000/. for every month 
during which the imprisonment of Richard might be pro- 
longed ; but there was a limit to the patience of the Ger- 
man barons, and their words convinced Henry A . D . 1194. 
that this limit had been reached. Richard J{^ e of 
was released, hostages being given for that Richard, 
portion of his ransom which was not paid on the spot. 
His deliverance set free the tongue of pope Caclestine, who 
now wrote to the Austrian duke as well as to the emperor, 
insisting that the ransom should be given back and the 
hostages restored. The emperor paid no heed to the 
command, but Leopold was brought to obedience by the 
discipline of excommunication and sickness, His return 
and Richard after four years' absence landed to En s tand - 
in his own kingdom to impoverish his people by fresh 
exactions for quarrels as useless as the enterprise which 
had taken him across the seas. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE FOURTH CRUSADE. 



The story of the fourth crusade is soon told. It was an 

effort prompted by the policy of a pope to whom the 

diversion of forces which the German emperor Motives of 

might turn against himself was of supreme the chief 

- , . promoters of 

importance, — of an emperor whose conscious- the fourth 
ness of ill desert made him catch eagerly at crusade - 
an opportunity for winning the favour of his German 
subjects — and of chiefs who hoped to take advantage of 
the weakened condition of the Turks for the promotion 
of their personal interests against the wishes and even 



136 The Crusades. ch. vm. 

against the warnings and protests of the Latin Christians 
in Palestine. 

Saladin, the chivalrous antagonist of the lion-hearted 
Richard, was dead ; and the fabric of his empire soon 
a.d. 1 193. showed signs of decay. His brother Sapha- 
Death of din, upheld by Saladin's soldiers, maintained 

Saladin and n . . . . . . _ _, , 

itsconse- his ground against the competition of Sala- 
quences. din's children who ruled in Egypt, Damascus, 

and Aleppo. But although Christians and Mahomedans 
were alike weighed down by the pressure of a terrible 
famine, the Knights of St. John longed to strike a blow by 
which they thought that they could surely crush their 
enemies. Their efforts to -stir up a crusade in England 
and in Europe were seconded by pope Caelestine III., 
who promised all the spiritual rewards which had called 
forth the heroism or the brutality of the earlier pilgrim 
warriors. On Philip Augustus all entreaties were thrown 
away. Richard of England, it is said, was nursing 
dreams of conquests which were to place him in the seat 
of the Byzantine Caesars ; but for the time he was busied 
with the less pleasing task of wringing money from im- 
poverished subjects. 

But if pope Caelestine hoped that by urging this 
crusade he should rid himself of his mortal enemy, he 
was doomed to disappointment. The death of Tancred, 
king of Sicily, and of his heir enabled the emperor 
Henry VI., the son of Barbarossa, to claim the island by 

right of his wife Constantia (p. 124) ; and the 
ment given force which Germany might bring together 
SdebyThe for the reconquest of the Holy Land could be 
emperor made available for strengthening the imperial 

power in Southern Europe. Thus the enter- 
prise received his strongest approval, and his encourage- 
ment stirred up a throng of barons, knights, and prelates 
to assume the cross. But he had no intention of journey- 



1 196-7. The Fourth Crusade. 137 

ing to Palestine in person. Money and men he was 
ready to contribute ; but his own task lay nearer home. 
He had levelled the walls of Capua and Naples, A D 6 
and was besieging a Sicilian castle, when his Death of 

11 1 r 1 • i Henry VI. 

own imprudence brought on a fever which cut 
short at the age of thirty a career shameful for its merci- 
less and wholesale tyranny. 

His barons with their followers reached the Holy Land 
at a time when, although the truce made with Saladin 
(p. 131) had expired, the Latin Christians were Arrival of his 
not disposed to renew hostilities. But the barons with 

,, - r , their troops 

Germans had come to fight, not to debate ; in the Holy 

and their energy was to be tested by Saphadin, Land- 

who resolved to be first in striking a blow. Jaffa was 

taken before any succour could reach it from capture of 

Acre, its inhabitants slaughtered by hundreds J alTa b y 

11 , ■> ■ r -r • 1 Saphadin. 

or by thousands, and its fortifications, the 
work on which Richard and his soldiers had toiled so 
hard (p. 128), utterly demolished. The arrival of a second 
body of German crusaders seemed to justify a fresh 
movement which was directed against Berytos. Saphadin 
compelled them to fight between Tyre and Sidon : but 
he did so to his grievous cost. His army was for the 
time broken, and Jaffa with Sidon and other cities came 
again into the possession of the Christians. 
In the town of Berytos they found, it is said, fresh cm- 
provisions stored up for three years, and the Conrad!"^ 
power and confidence of the conquerors b i^, P, of . 

ii- j 1 1 • i r Hildesheim. 

were largely increased by the arrival 01 a 

third body of armed pilgrims led by Conrad, bishop 

of Hildesheim, chancellor of the empire. 

The crusaders were, in all seeming, in the a .d. 1197. 
full career of victory : but the advantages ^gg ^ f f the 
which they had gained were lost almost in Thoron. 
a moment by their own infatuated bloodthirstiness. 



13S The Crusades. ch.viii. 

They had besieged the castle of Thoron, and so under- 
mined the rocks on which it rested, that the garrison, 
foreseeing the inevitable end, agreed to surrender on 
the single stipulation that they should be allowed a 
free passage into Moslem territory. The terms were 
accepted ; but so loud were still the threats of vengeance, 
so persistent, it is said, the assurances which the French, 
men gave to the besieged of the deadly intentions of the 
Germans, that the miserable garrison resolved to fight to 
the death rather than fall into their hands. They lined 
the passages which the besiegers had scooped out in the 
rock, and their desperate resistance filled with dismay the 
Com lete savages who but a little while ago had been 
defeat of the crying out for their blood. The disorganisa- 
tion which had not once or twice disgraced 
the armies of the earlier crusaders was seen again in even 
greater degree. The chiefs fled from the camp in the 
night, and their followers woke to find themselves deserted. 
A confusion ensued so utter and helpless that an enemy 
might have won a victory almost without striking a blow ; 
but the Saracens were scarcely less exhausted than the 
Christians, and these on being gathered after their dis- 
persion were able to accuse each the other of obstinacy, 
cowardice, or treachery. Conrad of Hildesheim, hastening 
to Jaffa with the purpose of restoring its walls, had won 
a battle fought against Saphadin at a cost fully equal to 
any profit which might accrue from it. The tidings of 
the death of Henry VI. dealt the final blow to the enter- 
prise, by recalling to Germany those princes who had 
an interest in the election of the emperor. 
Capture of Those who remained behind took refuge in 
nJ^sacreof Jaffa, only, however, to meet their doom a 
the crusa- few months later at the hands of a Moslem 
host which suddenly attacked and stormed the 
city, while the Germans were showing their devotion to 



n 9 8. The Fifth Crusade. 139 

St. Martin by drinking themselves into a state of helpless 
stupidity. 

In spite of these disasters the mockery of the Latin 
kingdom of Jerusalem was still carried on. On the death 
of Henry of Champagne (p. 130), his widow Isabella was 
advised by the grand-master of the Hospi- AlmerIc of 
tallers to marry Almeric of Lusignan who Lusignan 
had recently succeeded his brother Guy as saltan? 
king of Cyprus. Isabella showed no unwil- c vP rus - 
lingness to follow this counsel, and with her fourth 
husband she added the title of queen of Cyprus to that 
of queen of Jerusalem. If the politics of the time re- 
presented Cyprus as a convenient retreat in cases of 
emergency, such considerations have little interest or 
none. The only valid plea for keeping up the fiction 
of the Latin kingdom in Palestine would be found in the 
likelihood that the abandonment of the title would be 
regarded throughout Europe as a confession of defeat, and 
would be followed by the complete extinction of the 
crusading impulse. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE FIFTH CRUSADE. 



At its outset, if not in its results, the fifth crusade ex- 
hibits something like a return to the spirit of the age 
which gave so vast a force to the preaching of the her- 
mit Peter and the eloquence of Urban II. In the chair 
of St. Peter there was now seated a man of a .d. 1198. 
far greater power than 'the pope who stirred fnnocent° f 
the Western world to a fever of enthusiasm at HI. 
the council of Clermont. At the age of thirty-seven 
— an age without example perhaps in the annals of the 



140 The Crusades. 



CH. IX. 



papacy — Lothair, of the house of Conti, cardinal of St. 
Mark, had been chosen pope by the unanimous voice of 
all the cardinals who were present, at a time when every 
other power seemed to be tottering, if not in the very 
throes of dissolution. The Byzantine empire was in its 
decrepitude ; the Latin kingdom of Palestine was reduced 
to a mere strip of coast ; an infant was king of Naples ; 
the French king Philip Augustus was paying in whatever 
measure the penalties of an evil life ; the man wfao was 
hoping to wear the English crown was the vindictive 
and despicable John whose treachery had slain his father. 
Everywhere was disunion, faction, and deadly hatred : 
and in the midst of this chaos appeared the one man 
whose serene tranquillity, based on the consciousness of a 
superhuman commission and on the sanction of a divine 
law, was undisturbed by the storms raging around 
him. The influence, righteously acquired by Leo and 
Gregory the Great, and vastly extended (not altogether 
by the most righteous means) by Gregory VII. (p. 20) 
was wielded with even greater effect by the youthful pon- 
tiff whose e>e surveyed with calm yet exhaustive scrutiny 
the troubled scene of European politics. 

To this exalted position the undefined claims of previous 
popes would probably never have raised Innocent III., 

had it not been for the crusades. In these en- 
Effect of the , . . 111 
crusades terpnses the popes had a pretext ready to hand 

Sle jSisdfc? f° r interfering with the affairs of every nation 

tion of the and country, for suspending or annulling civil 

jurisdiction, for levying taxes under the name 

of alms, for releasing barons from the allegiance due to 

their sovereigns, inferior tenants from their chiefs, debtors 

from their creditors. The crusade became a task which 

the popes might impose for their souls' health on refrac 

tory emperors and kings. All whose hearts were fillei 

with the love of Christ must long to take part in the hoi 



o 

• s 

h 

■ 



H98. The Fifth Crusade. 141 

work of rescuing his sepulchre from the hands of the un- 
believers. If any were careless or indifferent to a duty 
thus constraining, it must be because theirdives were not 
as pure, their faith not so sound, as it should be, and 
by such men the divine power for rebuke and even 
chastisement committed to t^e vicars of Christ and of 
the prince of the apostles mustmake itself felt. If kings 
and great feudal chiefs would prove themselves to be 
good Christians, they must put on the cross : and the 
assumption of the badge imposed an obligation from 
which, if the popes were bent on keeping them to it, it 
would be almost, if not altogether, hopeless for them to 
escape. If they resisted, their sentence was excommuni- 
cation ; and excommunication, not removed, meant death 
here and hereafter. — — *v 

The effect of this policy (for such, however sincere 
some of the popes may have been, it assuredly must be 
called) showed itself especially in the weaken- . 

ing of the imperial power, without which such f the im- 
a supremacy as that of Innocent III. over the P enal P° vver - 
sovereigns of his age would have been an impossibility. 
The emperor Conrad had been driven to take the cross 
by the awful pictures which Bernard drew of the judgement 
day (p. 88) : he came back shorn practically of all his 
power. Barbarossa had obeyed the papal bidding, only 
to die in a distant land ; and the struggle was to be re- 
newed in a later crusade with a sovereign who was only 
in his cradle when the cardinal Lothair began his career 
as pope. 

But if the crusades and the undefined powers which 
they brought to the popes carried to its utmost 
height the fabric of their supremacy, they be- mistrust of 
gan at the same time to undermine it. At no R^e by the 
time had the Roman court possessed a high peoples of 

r . \ . Europe. 

reputation for pecuniary probity ; more com- 



14 2 The Crusades. CH . ix. 

monly it had been known as the seed-bed in which venality, 
jobbery, and corruption flourished with rank luxuriance. 
All at once, owing to the new impulse given to the ener- 
gies of Christendom, the popes became the possessors 
or administrators of revenues more vast than any of 
which in earlier ages they could have ventured to dream. 
Then as in these enterprises failure followed on failure 
and the results attained seemed wholly inadequate to the 
outlay, the suspicion was awakened that the funds obtained 
for the crusades were sometimes diverted to other pur- 
poses. The suspicion might be unjust, and the popes 
might appoint barons and bishops not belonging to their 
court to be trustees of revenues which were not even to 
be kept in Italy. Still in spite of these precautions the 
old sayings were repeated, and they came not unfrequently 
with chilling force just when the crusading enthusiasm 
had been fanned into the fiercest flame. 

This suspicion threatened to be fatal to the new enter- 
prise which Innocent sought to promote for the salvation of 
Efforts of the Holy Land, — nay, for that of all Christians 
removed whether of the East or the West. Not even 
mistrust. Urban II. had been more fervent in his ex- 

hortations, more lavish in his promises of eternal happi- 
ness, more stern in his threatenings of endless perdition. 
Still from these loftier regions he had to descend to de- 
fences against charges of personal corruption, and to ap- 
point for the management of the crusading revenues com- 
mittees to which it was supposed that suspicion could not 
possibly attach itself. More than this, the pope and his 
cardinals must show themselves ready to bear to the full 
the burdens which they sought to lay upon others. A 
tenth of all their revenues would be devoted to the rescue 
of the Holy Land from the power of the infidel. The 
clergy in all other countries were to contribute at least 
a fortieth part, and the laity should be everywhere urged 



1 1 89. The Fifth Crusade. 143 

to contribute to the utmost of their power. The funds 
so raised were to be put into a safe place, the amount 
only being notified at Rome : and hardhearted indeed 
must he be who would hold aloof from such a work of 
love and mercy. 

But the indifference with which his words were every- 
where received furnishes a fresh proof that the work of H 
a genuine crusade can be set in motion only FuIk of 
by the combination of authority with the Neuilly. 
enthusiasm of the demagogue. So it had been in the 
days of the hermit Peter (p. 26), and of the sjiint who 
had tried to cover the hermit with contempt. So, hap- 7 
pily for Innocent, it was now, when Fulk, a parish priest 
of Neuilly near Paris, was smitten with the crusading' 
fever. Even as a priest he had for a time led a life of 
miserable slackness, if not of gross vice ; but his heart 4 
was touched with the penitence which was kindled in 
Mary Magdalene or Mary of Egypt. He had striven to 
atone for his sins by the severest asceticism, and to 
remedy his deplorable ignorance by attending the lectures 
of Peter the Chanter, in whom Innocent hoped to find 
the most eloquent preacher of his crusade. This hope 
was not to be realised. Peter was seized by a fatal ill- 
ness, but his last words bequeathed to Fulk the mission 
which he had himself received from the pope. 

Even before the death of Peter, Fulk had preached in 
the streets and lanes of the great city, and his words 
had melted the most obdurate and evil-lived 
sinners to tears. Still the spell of his oratory 
seemed to be losing its power, and he had gone back 
to his parish work at Neuilly when the last charge of 
Peter the Chanter animated him with an irresistible im- 
pulse. He came forward now not merely as the preacher 
of a crusade, but as the stern reprover of vice and of 
spiritual wickedness in high places. Like Urban and 



144 The Crusades. ch. ix. 

Eugenius, Innocent saw his opportunity. He wrote to 
Fulk, expressing his hearty approbation of his work, and 
bidding him, in concert with some of the Black and 
White Monks, and with the sanction of the legate Peter 
a.d 1 198. °f Capua, go up and down the land calling 
The mission on all men to repent and to give proof 

of Fulk . . I,-,* 

sanctioned of penitence by hastening to the land of 

by the pope. promise! 

Soon the tidings spread from city to city that a preacher 
had appeared whose powers were not inferior to those of 
Effects of his St. Bernard. His miracles were not indeed 
eloquence. S o numerous, nor, for the most part, of the 
sort which ascribed to Bernard the excommunication of 
troublesome flies, who under this potent sentence fell 
dead from the ceiling, and were swept up from the 
floor by shovelfuls. His humour was not less ready than 
his eloquence. His hearers strove for pieces of his 
clothing to be kept as sacred relics. ' One noisy by- 1 ^ 
stander had caused him special annoyance. He turned! 
to his audience, and told them that he had not blessed^J 
his own garments, but that he would bless those of this | 
man. In a moment the man's clothes were in tatters, 
and the fragments carried off in triumph as relics en- 
dowed with miraculous power. 

Yet, taken at its best, the effect of Fulk's preaching 
was not equal to that of Bernard or of Peter the Hermit. 
His words might enjoin high austerities : his appearance 
might not belie his words, but it did not convey indispu- 
table evidence of their truth. He looked and lived much 
like other men ; and, what was worse, he had to do 
battle with the fatal suspicion which Innocent had striven 
with the utmost earnestness to shake off. He became the 
receiver of vast sums of money; and murmurs would make 
themselves heard which asserted that all these moneys 
were not used as they ought to be. His influence was on 






1 198-1202. The Fifth Crusade. 145 

the whole waning : but he was not to see the beginning 
of the enterprise which he had so strenuously A D 
promoted. Fulk died of a fever at Neuilly Death of 
while the crusaders were still at Venice, and 
his mantle seemed to fall on the Cistercian abbot Martin. 

Other preachers also girded up their loins for the 
great work, and their words told especially on some of 
the younger men among the French princes. Foremost 
among these was Theobald, count of Champagne, who 
had seen only twenty summers, and whose a .d. czoo. 
goal was well nigh reached already. With him Jf^ 1 }^ 
Louis, count of Blois and Chartres, cast in his crusade. 
lot, followed by Simon of Montfort, the infamous leader 
of the yet future Holy War against the Albigensians, 
Walter of Brienne, and with many others last but not least 
Geoffrey of Villehardouin, marshal of Champagne, the 
historian of the crusade. Some months later the badge 
was assumed by Baldwin, count of Flanders, by Hugh 
of St. Pol, by the count of Perche, and many more. 

The followers of these chiefs amounted already to a 
formidable army. But the leaders had no adequate navy 
at their command, and the history of all the preceding 
expeditions had convinced men at last of the AT - • 

r _ Mission 

desperate risks to be encountered in the land from the 
journey across Europe and the Lesser Asia, barons to 
One state alone there was which was fully equal Venice - 
to all demands that might be made upon it for ships ; 
and of the crusades this state at least had no just reason 
to complain. These armed pilgrimages had vastly in- 
creased its commerce and its profits, and had produced in 
Europe a general desire for eastern products which in- 
sured the continuance of this widespread trade. To 
Venice accordingly the eyes of the crusading 
chiefs were turned, and the envoys of the 
counts of Blois, Flanders, and Champagne appeared there 
L 



146 The Crusades. ch. ix. 

in the first week of Lent before the doge, or duke, Henry 
Dandolo, venerable in his age of more than ninety years, 
and the victim of that Byzantine cruelty which had almost, 
if not wholly, deprived him of his sight. ' Sire,' said 
Villehardouin, the ambassador from the count of Cham- 
pagne, ' we are come in the name of the great barons of 
France, who are pledged to avenge by the conquest of 
Jerusalem the insults offered to our Lord Jesus Christ. 
From no other state can they obtain the help which they 
desire, and they implore you for the sake of the Holy 
Cross and the Holy Sepulchre to furnish them with ships 
and all other things necessary for conveying their men 
across the sea.' ' On what terms ? ' asked the doge. ' On 
any that you may name,' was the reply, ' so long as we 
may be able to bear them.' The doge promised an answer 
at the end of eight days ; and when these were passed, 
Compa-tfor the envoys were told that for four marks of 
the convey- silver for each horse and two for each man the 
crusaders to republic would furnish ships, provisioned for 
Palestine. n j ne mont hs, for the conveyance of 4,500 
knights with their horses, 9,000 squires, and 20,000 in- 
fantry. The total cost would be 85,000 marks of silver ; 
but the republic would further join the expedition with 
50 galleys of its own. The terms were not unreasonable, 
and the envoys departed, some homewards, some to seek 
further aid from Genoa and Pisa. Here they fared but 
ill; and Villehardouin reached Troyes only to find Theobald 
the count of Champagne prostrate with hopeless sickness. 
In his joy at seeing him, the young man mounted his 
horse : but it was for the last time. In a few days he died, 
and the count of Perche soon followed him to the grave. 

The count of Champagne was to have been the chief 
of the enterprise. . The offer of the command was now 
refused by the duke of Burgundy as by many others : it 
was accepted at last by Boniface, marquis of Montferrat. 



1202. The Fifth Crusade. 147 

But it was not until the following year that the 
crusading forces were fairly in motion : and 

1 • 1 1 , r 1 • A - D - I2 ° 2 - 

their lack of cohesion was at once seen in all Failure of 
its mischievous effects. Venice may have ders C tomake 
driven — thereis no just ground for thinking that u p the sum 
she had driven — a hard bargain ; but as it was with the Ve- 
certain that from her terms she would make no netians - 
abatement, it was clear that the interests of the crusaders 
should lead them to adhere to or to give up the compact 
in a body. To divide their forces was merely to lay a 
heavier burden on those who should still seek the aid of 
Venice. But of two courses the crusaders were well nigh 
sure to choose the worse ; and while some sailed across 
the bay of Biscay and through the straits of Gibraltar, 
others embarked at Marseilles. Others again found their 
way to ports in southern Italy, leaving Villehardouin 
to deplore at Venice the wretched mischief wrought by 
these desertions. It seemed at first that they had dealt 
a death-blow to the enterprise. The Venetian fleet was 
ready, in perfect order and magnificently equipped : but 
the price, the 85,000 silver marks, must be paid in ad- 
vance, and the counts of Flanders and St. Pol and the 
marquis of Montferrat could only make up 51,000 after 
selling all their plate and putting the utmost strain upon 
their credit. 

Of this dilemma the doge proposed a solution which 
at first excited the astonishment, the dismay, and even 
the disgust of the crusaders. The war which 
pope Innocent had striven to kindle was commute the 
strictly a holy war, directed only against the ^ex^di- 7 
infidel for the rescue of lands which formed tion against 
the inalienable heritage of Christendom. But 
the Venetian doge now announced that the 34,000 marks 
might be discharged by conquering for the republic the 
town of Zara which had been, so he averred, unjustly 

L 2 



148 The Crusades. ch. ix. 

seized by the king of Hungary. The summer wore on. 
The feast of the Nativity of the Virgin had come round, 
when Dandolo, ascending the pulpit in the church of St. 
Mark, declared his readiness to live or die with the pil- 
grims of the cross, and then, going to the high altar, fixed 
the blood-red badge on his high cotton cap. The sight 
called forth the tears and wakened the enthusiasm of all 
who were present. The less pleasant features of the 
compact lost their repulsive aspect ; and the interests of 
Venice were further consulted by the agreement that she 
should have one half of all conquests that might be 
made. 

A new actor now appeared upon the scene. For some 

years past the palace of the Byzantine Caesars had been 

defiled by a series of bloody murders or of 

M?ssion 5 to mutilations still more cruel. Emperor after 

Rome to emperor had been put to death or blinded 

seek aid for r L 

the dethron- and thrust into a dungeon. The latter penalty 

eipemr 1 !"" was the doom of Isaac Angelus when his 
Isaac Ange- throne was usurped by his brother Alexios, a 
tyrant not wise in his generation. Isaac, 
laxly guarded, was able to communicate with his parti- 
sans ; his son Alexios, having contrived to make his 
escape in a Pisan vessel to Ancona, appeared to plead his 
cause before Innocent at Rome. He received no genial 
welcome. The pope had perhaps a better hope of bring- 
ing about the submission of the Eastern to the Western 
church through the possessor of a throne than through 
claimants or pretenders. He was better received at the 
court of his brother-in-law, the Swabian chief Philip ; 
and his messengers now appeared in Venice to implore 
the help of the commercial republic and the high chivalry 
of Western Christendom. • 

Not impossibly the vision which this crusade was des- 
tined for a time to realise may have floated before the 



1202. The Fifth Crusade. 149 

mind of Dandolo, as he listened to their earnest plead- 
ings ; but for the present he confined himself _ 

. . . . Determina- 

to words of encouragement and sympathy, tion of the 
The task immediately before them was the con- JgfJE^jSJ 
quest of Zara ; and Venice stuck to her bond expedition to 

Zara. 

with inflexible pertinacity. In vain the abbot 
Martin, who with his followers had crossed the Tyrolese 
Alps, protested against the invasion of territories belong- 
ing to the Hungarian king who had himself assumed the 
cross. They were told that the scheme might be given up 
on the payment of the 34,000 silver marks. In vain Inno- 
cent sent his cardinal legate Peter of Capua with orders 
to interdict the Venetians from assailing Zara even with 
their own forces, and to lead the army of the pilgrims 
himself to Palestine. The legate was told that he might 
embark in their fleet if he pleased, but that he must not 
dare to exercise his legatine authority when he had done 
so. The indignant cardinal hastened to Rome. Some 
few drew back from the enterprise : and the marquis of 
Montferrat pleaded pressing engagements which withheld 
him at present from taking the command. 

But with the main body of the crusaders the Venetian 
fleet set sail, in a magnificent order and with a display 
of power which seemed capable of sweeping sieoe and 
everything before it. The people of Zara, conquest of 
dismayed at the sight of the armament, 
offered at once to surrender on the best terms which they 
could get. The doge promised to consider the matter 
with the barons : but while they were thus in council, 
Simon of Montfort, the destined hero of a bloody crusade 
against heretical Christians, upbraided the Zarans with 
their cowardice, and assured them that the conquest of 
Zara was no part of the crusading plan. When the sum- 
mons for the envoys came from the doge's tent, they were 
nowhere to be found. They had hastened back into the 



1 50 The Crusades. en. ix. 

city, and the walls had been manned for a siege. In the 
camp Guido, the abbot of Vaux Cernay, warned the army 
that they were pilgrims of the cross, under oath not to 
make war against Christians in communion with the Holy 
See. In high wrath Dandolo insisted that the barons 
should keep to their engagements. Few dared, perhaps 
few wished, to gainsay him. For five days Zara was 
a.d. 1202. besieged ; on the sixth it fell. The doge 
Nov. 15. t00 j_ possession, but he divided the spoil 

with his allies. 

The reduction of Zara raised hopes which were to be 

speedily disappointed. The crusaders wished to sail at 

once for the Holy Land. The doge was deter- 

Proposal to . , , . . 

divert the mined to guard his conquest against attacks 
the restart from the Hungarian king. Winterwas coming 
tion of on . the- countries of Western Asia were suffer- 

Alexios at . . . 

Constanti- l'ng grievously from famine, and a voyage then 
nople- undertaken would bring with it the miseries 

of starvation. The only course was to make Zara their 
winter quarters. The proposal called forth vehement 
opposition, which was not suppressed without bloodshed. 
The arrival of the marquis of Montferrat to 
take the chief command gave promise of 
more harmonious action ; but the crusade was to be a 
second time diverted from its original purpose. Envoys 
came from the Byzantine Alexios and the Swabian Philip 
urging that the purposes of the expedition would be 
better achieved by placing Alexios on the throne of Con- 
stantinople than by attempts, which would certainly be 
in vain, to wrest Palestine from the Saracens. They 
insisted that the crusader's vow was really a vow to pro- 
mote in every way the cause of God, of right, and of 
justice : and in no way would this cause be more surely 
furthered than by restoring the disinherited prince to the 
throne of which he had been robbed by an usurper. They 



1202. The Fifth Crusade. 151 

pleaded that in this instance interest and duty went hand 
in hand. It would be the first business of Alexios after 
his restoration to bring the Eastern church into submission 
to the Roman church and see ; his next task would be to 
aid the crusaders to the best of his power in the work 
which they had most at heart. He would not only feed 
the whole army and give them 400,000 silver marks ; but 
he would also join them in person or send 10,000 men at 
his own charge. 

The announcement of this proposal drew from the 
abbot of Vaux Cernay the passionate rejoinder that they 
were in arms only against Saracens, and that Resolution 
to Syria only would they go. But though he to accept the 
was firmly seconded by his partisans, there posed by° 
was practically no reply to the retort that in Alexios - 
Syria they could do nothing, and that Jerusalem could 
be won only through Constantinople or Egypt. Words 
and tempers ran high : but the treaty with Alexios was 
accepted by the marquis of Montferrat and the count of 
Flanders, and the destination of the army was fixed. 
The numbers of that army were slowly diminished 
through the weeks of winter. The terrors of the papal 
interdict hung like a cloud over the host, and Negotiations 
the barons resolved to send envoys who with the pope 
should assure Innocent that the diversion to movaUrfthe 
Zara. which they and he alike lamented, was to interdlct - 
be laid wholly to the charge of those faithless knights 
who by departing from other ports left their comrades 
without the means of paying the money due to the Vene- 
tians. Of the new compact made with Alexios they pru- 
dently said nothing : and Innocent, while he agreed to 
suspend the interdict till the arrival of his legate Peter of 
Capua, insisted that the barons must still make atone- 
ment for their offence. Against the Venetians he took a 
higher tone. The envoys must carry with them a letter 



152 The Crusades. ch.ix. 

excommunicating these marauders. The marquis Boniface 
received the brief, but, instead of publishing it, he wrote 
to Innocent, sending the submission of the barons and 
saying that the Venetians were about to entreat his for- 
giveness for the conquest of Zara. No such entreaties 
came : and Innocent issued fresh orders that his brief 
should be placed in the hands of the doge. If this was 
done, it produced no result : and Innocent was startled, 
if not dismayed, when he learnt that the spoilers of Zara 
were making ready to sin on a larger scale. He de- 
nounced the whole scheme with seemingly vehement 
indignation. The emperor of Constantinople may have 
been guilty of blinding his brother and usurping his 
throne ; but his empire, he insisted, was under the special 
protection of the Holy See. It was no part of their 
business or their vow to avenge the wrongs of the prince 
Alexios ; it was their first and paramount duty to avenge 
the wrongs done to their Redeemer, the sign of whose 
cross they bore upon their shoulders. Nay, more, the 
Byzantine emperor had, at the special request of the 
pope, promised to furnish provisions for the crusaders : 
and the promise of the Eastern Caesar might be trusted. 
If it should fail, then they might forcibly take what they 
wanted, at the same time paying or promising to pay the 
value in money. 

Dandolo was in no mood to have his course checked 
by either papal pleadings or papal threats. The day of 
embarkation had arrived, and Simon of Mont- 
Easter. J fort, impenetrable in his gloomy bigotry, has- 
Vain at- tened away to join the king of Hungary, the 

innocenf to faithful servant of the pope. The other chiefs 
oppose the went on board the Venetian fleet, with perhaps 

expedition. , , . . , , . x \ 

a shrewd suspicion that their success would 
be followed by a marked change in the tone and language 
of the pope. But whatever might be his desire to keep 



203. 



The Fifth Crusade. 153 



on good terms with the reigning monarch, his longing 
to see the Byzantine church brought back to Roman 
subjection was altogether more intense. This submission 
would be the immediate result of the enthronement 
of Alexios, and the crusaders would depart for the 
Holy Land, (the vision of a Latin empire at Byzantium 
had not yet dawned upon their minds,) rich not only in 
the blessing of the pope, but in a wealth of sacred relics 
which, now stored up in the churches of the capital, ought 
to pass into the hands of the faithful children of the 
Roman obedience. 

About the time of the summer solstice, the Venetian 
fleet anchored in the Propontis nine miles to the west ot 
the imperial city. A few days later the army A D ioo „ 
was at Scutari, where thev received a message Arrival of 

r . . . ., , . . the fleet at 

from the reigning emperor Alexios promising Constanti- 
them aid in their passage through Asia Minor, nople ' 
on the condition that during their stay on the shores of 
the Bosporos they should do his subjects no harm. The 
reply was a summons to the usurper to descend from his 
throne, with a promise that on this condition they would 
obtain for him the pardon of his nephew, the rightful 
sovereign. 

This young prince was paraded by the Venetian fleet 
in front of the walls ; but the proclamation which called 
upon the people to acknowledge him as their sovereign 
was received with contemptuous silence or with showers of 
arrows, and no alternative remained but that Flight of the 
of open war. The struggle presents few usurper 
features of real interest : as a series of mili- 
tary operations it has little value or none. The imperial 
fleet consisted, it is said, of only twenty ships, and these 
useless, the anchors, cables, and sails having been sold 
by the admiral, a brother of the empress. The army 
exhibited all the pageantry of war, and lacked almost 



154 The Crusades. ch. ix. 

every soldierly quality. The port of Constantinople and 
the town of Galata were soon in the possession of the 
invaders, and the siege of the city was begun, so far as the 
efforts of a force which could assail but an insignificant 
extent of wall deserves the name. The first flag planted 
on one of the towers was placed there by the men of 
Dandolo's ship ; and Dandolo himself, setting fire to the 
surrounding houses, kept off the imperial troops while his 
crew fortified themselves in their position. The Latins 
and the Greeks were now face to face. The splendid 
ranks of the Byzantine army stood, as it might seem, 
ready for battle, when Alexios gave the signal for retreat 
and sealed his own downfall. That night he fled from 
the city. The blind Isaac Angelus, drawn from his 
dungeon, was again clad in the imperial robes, and his 
son Alexios was admitted to share his imperial dignity. 

The tasks of the crusaders in Europe seemed to be 
now done. Their heralds announced to the Egyptian 
The crusa- sultan that they would soon take summary 
dersare vengeance unless he surrendered the Holy 

compelled to . 

spend the Land. The Pisans who had aided the 
Conslanti- usurping Alexios made up their quarrel with 
nopie. Venice. The French barons asked the for- 

giveness of the pope for the attack made upon Constanti- 
nople, and Innocent replied that it must depend on the 
fulfilment of the promises made by Alexios. This prince, 
having paid part of the money which he had sworn to 
give them, bade them remember how dear must be to 
himself the cost of alliance with them, and how greatly 
he must need their help to stem the tide of unpopularity. 
In short, he let them know that in or near Constantinople 
they must find their winter quarters. It was absurd to 
think of encountering the risks of a voyage during the 
winter : and even if they went, they could do nothing 
against the Turks until the spring. He would then see 



I2 o3. Tlic Fifth Crusade. 155 

that nothing should be left undone towards furthering 
the success of the crusade. 

The northern pilgrims received these proposals with 
murmurs of anger. But the decision lay really with 
Dandolo, and Dandolo declared that at this season of 
the year the ships of the republic should not be exposed 
to useless dangers. The army remained where it was : 
but new troubles came thick and fast. Religious anta- 
gonism ran out into brawls and fights. An accidental 
conflagration preyed for eight days on the __ 

i 1 r t ■ r^. Efforts of 

streets and houses of the city. Ihe rage Mourzcufle 
excited by these losses was increased by the Jtedosfiom 
exactions to which the young Alexios was the crusa- 
driven in order to meet his engagements with 
the crusaders, and was lashed into madness when his 
officers stripped the churches of their gold and silver 
ornaments. The indignation of the people found utter- 
ance in the vehement eloquence of Alexios Ducas, called 
Mourzoufle from his dark and shaggy eyebrows ; and his 
protests so far swayed the youthful emperor as to make 
him remiss in carrying out his compact with his allies. 
These told him plainly that to that compact he must 
strictly adhere, or, failing in this, must prepare himself for 
war. 

During the night following the day in which he re- 
ceived this warning Alexios sent a squadron of fire-ships 
against the Venetian fleet. The danger was Deposition 
great : but the Venetian sailors were as prompt and death of 

, , r™ 1 ' 11 1 • Alexios. 

as they were brave. The deadly ships were 
turned aside into open water, and a Pisan merchant ship 
was the only vessel set on fire and destroyed. It was the 
last exploit of Alexios. Another revolution hurled him 
from the throne, which after one or two more emperors 
had been set up and put down passed to Mourzoufle. 
The new Caesar showed some aptitude for war, but he 



156 The Crusades. ch. ix. 

preferred to try the effect of negotiations with Dandolo. 
The old doge retorted that with an usurper he could have 
no dealings, and that, if he sought peace, he should 
replace his master Alexios on the throne. Mourzoufle 
resolved that this demand should not be made a second 
time : and that night Alexios was slain in prison. 

For the fate of their former ally the crusaders professed 
to feel a profound sympathy ; and their grief prompted 
the resolution of cutting the evil at its root by placing a 
Resolution Latin emperor on the seat of the Eastern 
Latin d P ' a Caesars. The compact was accordingly drawn 
nasty in Con- up. The booty to be obtained within the 
stantinople. dty was tQ be shared equally between the 

French and the Venetians ; and a committee of twelve, 
half French, half Venetian, should elect the new sove- 
reign, who was to have one fourth part of the city with 
the palaces of Blachernai and Boukoleon, the rest of the 
city being shared by the two allied powers. Venice, 
freed from all feudal obligations to the Greek empire, 
should be equally free from all feudal dependence on 
the Latin sovereign, while the Latin patriarch should 
be chosen from the nation to which the emperor might 
not belong. 

The second siege of Constantinople is as devoid of 
interest as the first. The success of the Greeks on the 
a.d. 1204. fi rst day wa s followed by a series of disasters 
April. which on the fourth day enabled the Latins 

Siege and to force their way through the gates. Mour- 

conquest of , J ° ° 

Constanti- zoufle shut himself up in his palace. A third 
nope ' conflagration desolated the city. In the 

morning the conquerors learnt that the usurper had fled 
with many of the inhabitants. The Latin conquest was 
accomplished. The Byzantine clergy alone urged con- 
tinued resistance ; but when they presented Theodore 
Lascaris to the people as their emperor, their silence 



1 204. 



The Fifth Crusade. 157 



showed that the appeal was made in vain. Then, seeing 
that nothing more could be done, the patriarch John 
Kamateros fled from the sight of the awful scenes which 
disgraced the triumph of the Latins. The three Western 
bishops had strictly charged the crusaders to respect the 
churches and the persons of the clergy, the monks, and 
the nuns. They were talking to the winds. In the 
frantic excitement of victory all restraint was Horriblc ex _ 
flung aside, and the warriors of the cross cesses of the 
abandoned themselves with ferocious greed 
to their insatiable and filthy lewdness. With disgusting 
gestures and in shameless attire an abandoned woman 
screamed out a drunken song from the patriarchal chair 
in the church of Sancta Sophia, the magnificent work of 
Justinian. Wretches blind with fury drained off draughts 
of wine from the vessels of the altar : the table of obla- 
tion, famed for its exquisite and costly workmanship, was 
shattered : the splendid pulpit with its silver ornaments 
utterly defaced. Mules and horses were driven into the 
churches to bear away the sacred treasures ; if they fell, 
they were lashed and goaded till their blood streamed 
upon the pavement. While the savages were employed 
on these appropriate tasks, the more devout were busy in 
ransacking the receptacles of holy relics, and laying up 
a goodly store of wonder-working bones or teeth to be 
carried away to the churches of the great cities on the 
Rhine, the Loire, or the Seine. ' How/ asks the pope, 
' shall the Greek Church return to ecclesiastical unity 
and to respect for the Apostolic See, when they have seen 
in the Latins only examples of wickedness and works of 
darkness, for which they might justly loathe them worse 
than dogs ? ' The question might well be asked : and we 
may be well assured that Innocent would not be likely to 
over-colour the picture in favour of the Greeks, and that 
his informers would not care to put before him in their 



1 5 8 The Crusades. ch. ix. 

naked hideousness iniquities which it would be a sin to 
describe. 

The first task of the conquerors was to elect a chief 
and share the spoil. The committee of twelve met in 

the chapel of the palace and invoked the aid 
Baldwin, of the Holy Spirit. The six French electors 

Flanders as were a ^ ecclesiastics, — the abbot of Loces, 
emperor of the bishops of Troyes, Soissons, Halberstadt, 

and Bethlehem, and the archbishop-elect of 
Acre. Their first choice fell on Dandolo. His wisdom, 
his energy, his undaunted courage, seemed to point him 
out as the man best fitted to rule the empire in the 
winning of which he had played the chief part. But the 
old man cared little for the office, and to the Venetians 
the combination of the powers of emperor and doge in 
the same person probably boded ill for the best interests 
of the commercial republic. There remained only two 
who could well be placed in competition for the prize. 
The marquis of Montferrat, the lord of a petty princi- 
pality at the foot of the Alps, could be no object of 
Venetian jealousy, while his age and character well quali- 
fied him for the office. But Baldwin of Flanders, at the 
age of thirty-two, was in the first flush of vigorous man- 
hood ; he was come of the race of Charles the Great, 
and the French king was his cousin. He was also the 
feudal sovereign of a wealthy territory and the leader of 
a powerful army raised among his own people. The 
electors came to an unanimous decision, and this decision 
announced to the barons, who were waiting outside, that 
the count of Flanders was the Eastern Caesar. Boniface 
of Montferrat at once did homage to him as his lord ; 
and the old doge was the only man not called upon to 
make this act of submission. Borne on the shields of 
his comrades Baldwin was carried to the church of Sancta 
Sophia and there was invested with the purple buskins. 



i?o4. The Fifth Crusade. 159 

Three weeks later he was crowned by the papal legate, 
the new patriarch not having been yet elected. 

This election was to the Venetians a subject of greater 
anxiety than the choice of a temporal sovereign. There 
was no room here for the fear that Venice Election of 
might become an insignificant dependency of Moroslni as 
a vast empire ; and they set to work with their patriarch of 

1 -Tii r~T Constanti- 

usual promptitude and coolness. The cano- nopie. 
nical regularity of the election was, as they supposed, 
ensured by the appointment of Venetian priests to be 
canons of Sancta Sophia ; and these canons were placed 
under oath to elect none but a Venetian. Their choice 
fell on Thomas Morosini, a member of one of their no- 
blest houses and a man highly esteemed by Innocent III. 
The Roman pontiff played his part with consummate 
skill. While the usurping Alexios was on the throne, he 
had striven to secure through his help the gmbas * 
submission of the Eastern church. No sooner from Bald- 
had he fled, than Innocent reminded his vSetUns to 
nephew Alexios of the promises of obedience the pope - 
which he had personally made, and urged the crusaders 
to insist on the immediate fulfilment of this promise. In 
no other way could they justify themselves for diverting 
to other purposes the forces which had been enrolled 
solely for the redemption of the Holy Land. He had now 
to deal with a new order of things. The emperor Bald- 
win had prayed him to ratify the compact made with the 
Venetians, to stir up afresh the zeal of Western Europe 
for the maintenance of the Latin empire in the East, to 
send forth new armies who in the countries now brought 
under Latin sway would assuredly reap an abundant har- 
vest, and to reinforce the Latin clergy by a multitude of 
new recruits. The Venetians had besought his forgiveness 
for attacking Zara, his sanction of the conquest of Con- 
stantinople. They could not bring themselves to believe 



160 The Crusades. ch. ix. 

that the people of Zara were really under his protection, 
and hence they had determined to bear with the excommu- 
nication in patient silence until the pontiff should learn the 
truth. For what they had done at Byzantium the young 
Alexios was chargeable, not they. He had tried to send 
fire-ships among their fleet, and it was indispensable for 
their own safety and that of their allies to deprive him of 
the power of doing further mischief. 

The satisfaction which Innocent felt, and avowed that 

he felt, was expressed in carefully guarded terms. He 

was rejoiced to be able to revoke the excom- 

Answers of .. ...._ . . . 

innocent mumcation of the Venetians, and so high was 

his admiration of the valour and wisdom of 
Dandolo that he could not comply with the prayer of the 
venerable doge to be relieved from further obligation 
under his vow. The hero who could bear so lightly the 
burden of ninety winters must not deprive the crusade of 
services which would ensure success to the enterprise and 
a glorious reward for himself. To the delicate praise 
which thus took the form of a command he added the as- 
surance that he had taken the Latin empire under his 
special protection, and had prayed the sovereigns and 
prelates of the West to exert themselves to the utmost in 
its behalf. He had felt himself bound to pass a stern 
condemnation on the deeds of horrible violence and 
lewdness committed by the crusaders in the sacking of a 
Christian city ; but he could not withhold the admission 
that the history of the conquest was a memorable com- 
mentary on the parables of the talents and the vineyard. 
The Greeks had done nothing with the good things com- 
mitted to their trust : far from aiding, they had seriously 
hindered, the warriors of the cross and even done their 
best to destroy them. They had kept up a causeless 
schism ; they had turned a deaf ear to all entreaties which 
called upon them to come back to the unity of the Church; 



1204. The Fifth Crusade. 161 

and they had now paid the penalty by seeing their inhe- 
ritance in the hands of better husbandmen who would 
bring forth fruit in due season. But if Innocent was thus 
complaisant with the secular empire, he laid a heavy hand 
on the spiritual power which the Venetians hoped to 
secure as their special portion. The pope had a stern 
censure for the conduct both of the Venetians and the 
French in daring to seize on the temporalities of the 
Eastern church, and to portion out along with other lands 
and property all that might remain over and above the 
amount deemed sufficient for the maintenance of the 
Latin clergy. Nor could he allow the validity of Moro- 
sini's election, whether by a self-constituted chapter or by 
priests chosen by a purely secular authority. The election, 
in short, was null and void ; but so great was his regard 
for the Venetians, so high his esteem for Morosini, that 
he would himself appoint to the Byzantine patriarchate the 
man whom they had chosen, and invest him with singular 
privileges. These privileges involved a reservation of cer- 
tain appeals to the pope ; and the very plenitude of the 
powers thus bestowed served only to show with the greater 
clearness the paramount sovereignty of the Roman pontiff 
to whom he owed his dignity and his jurisdiction. 

The great crusade promoted by Innocent had thus 
produced results very different from those which he had 
looked for. It had not touched the power of the Syrian 
sultans ; it had not struck a blow on the soil of Palestine. 
But on the whole he had no cause to complain. It had 
widely extended the limits of his supremacy, R esu i ts f 
and had subdued a spiritual rebellion which the crusades 
had rent asunder the seamless robe of Christ, and to^hef 
But if the pope was a gainer, Venice had Venetians - 
secured to herself advantages, more solid perhaps, cer- 
tainly more enduring. By the conquest of Zara she had 
laid the foundations of her vast commercial empire ; and 



1 62 The Crusades, ch. ix. 

her factories at Pera needed only the defence of her fleets, 
while the Latins in Byzantium had to guard themselves 
against attacks by land. She had her settlements in the 
richest islands of the Egean, and in every harbour was seen 
the flag of the maritime republic. This growth of her 
commerce was, moreover, fostering in her a spirit of anta- 
gonism to ecclesiastical authority, of which Innocent seems 
to have foreseen the issue, and which he sought with 
all his power to crush. The abbot of St. Felix in Venice 
was consecrated, by the command of Ziani the successor 
of Henry Dandolo, to the archbishopric of Zara, the sanc- 
tion of the pope not being first asked. The wrath of 
Innocent blazed forth at once. He reviewed in the 
harshest terms the general policy of the Venetians in the 
conduct of the crusade. It was true that they had taken 
Zara, and even that they had overthrown the Byzan- 
tine empire : but what would not an army, which had 
won such victories, have achieved in the Holy Land? 
Had the crusaders fulfilled their vows, not only must 
Egypt have been subdued, and the cross replaced on the 
dome of Omar, but Syria itself must have been swept 
clear of all Saracen dominion. That this glorious result 
had not been brought about already, was the fault of 
the Venetians and of them alone. He could not therefore 
recognise their archbishop, and he insisted on their sub- 
mission under pain of the censures which were ready 
to fall upon them. There is no evidence to show that 
the Venetians took the reproof to heart, or that they 
vouchsafed any reply. 



The Latin Empire of Constantinople. 163 
CHAPTER X. 

THE LATIN EMPIRE OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 

We have already (p. 53) marked the broad contrast 
between the character of the Greeks and that of the 
Latin and Teutonic nations of Western Contrast be- 
Europe; between the centralised and legal G^eksand 
government of the one and the feudalism of the Latins. 
the other ; between the restlessness and ambition which 
in the West ran out into constant private war, and the 
habit of almost unreflecting obedience which had left the 
subjects of the Eastern Caesars unable to cope with 
rougher and ruder spirits except with the weapons supplied 
by cunning, fraud, and treachery. The crusaders liad 
come to a people which to a large extent might be de- 
scribed as in a state of decrepitude, but to a land never- 
theless which was not less Christian than Italy or France, 
nay, which boasted churches of an antiquity more vener- 
able than those of Milan, Ravenna, and Rome itself,- 

to a land ruled by a system of law which has affected 
the legislation of every nation in Europe, — to a land 
where Antony and Basil had reared the fabric of 
monachism long before the days of the Nursian Benedict 
or the Scottish Columba, — to a land where the ritual of 
the Church had taken root while Christianity was in its 
cradle, and had moulded the life, the thoughts, the very 
being of all its members. 

This time-honoured civilisation the Western champions 
of the cross now fancied that they could crush or sweep 
away. Not one of them cared to think that A 

Attempt to 

he was dealing with Christians or with the upset the 
subjects of the ancient empire of Octavius or o^ToS" 
of Constantine. For them the land, not less em P' re - 
than Syria and Egypt, was a part of heathendom; the people 



1 64 The Crusades. ch. x. 

savages to be brought under a yoke as heavy as that of 
the Western serfs ; their patriarchs, their bishops, their 
priests, and their monks were ministers of a false faith 
beyond the pale of charity or mercy. Wiser conquerors 
might have mingled with the people, and through inter- 
marriage might have infused new vigour into the feeble 
mass. By Baldwin and his allies a rigid line was drawn 
separating the present from the past. All dignities, offices, 
and lands were forfeited ; all were shared exclusively 
among the conquerors. If they were still under an 
emperor, this emperor was not the autocrat who repre- 
sented the majesty of Rome, but a mere feudal chief 
whose barons, although owing him homage, regarded 
themselves as practically his peers. In short, Baldwin 
and his comrades held that they might do at Constanti- 
nople what Godfrey and his allies had done in Palestine. 
The code of Justinian gave place to the Assize of Jeru- 
salem (p. 76), and not a single Greek was permitted to 
take part in the administration of this law. 

As it was with the secular order of things, so was it 
with the spiritual. The pope annulled without scruple 
Conduct of tne election of Morosini by self-chosen or 
the pope to- state-appointed canons : but he did so only 
Greek ' because his own authority was imperilled, not 
clergy. at a |j b ecause they were invading the juris- 

diction of a patriarch whose throne was as ancient as 
that of Innocent himself. Just as though they had been 
mere priests of Baal or Mahomedan Imams, the Greek 
clergy were all driven from their churches (p. 159), and 
the people compelled to abandon their venerable liturgy 
for that of the Church of Rome. The emperor besought 
the pope to send out bands of priests as though for the 
conversion of a heathen country, and to furnish Dominican 
and Cistercian monks for the purposes of reforming the 
stereotyped monachism of the East. Innocent was indeed 



The Latin Empire of Constantinople. 165 

full of exultation. His letters everywhere called on the 
faithful to succour the devoted missionaries who were 
preaching the Gospel in the churches of Constantinople 
and bringing home to the people the enormity of the 
heresy which denied the procession of the Holy Spirit 
from the Son as well as from the Father. ' Samaria/ he 
said, ' had now returned to Jerusalem ; God had trans- 
ferred the empire of the Greeks from the proud to the 
lowly, from the superstitious to the religious, from the 
schismatics to the Catholics, from the disobedient to the 
devoted servants of God.' He was impressed with the 
needfulness of sending young men from the schools of 
Paris to strengthen themselves by the learning of the East : 
Philip Augustus summoned young Greeks to Paris to 
receive instruction in the creed and ritual of the West. 
Both were playing with edged tools. The pope and the 
king were both encouraging that intercourse of thought 
which was in the end to scatter to the winds the theory 
of the divine right of temporal despots and the infallibility 
of spiritual riders. 

The order of things so set up lasted a little longer 
than the Latin principality of Edessa (p. 57). It was 
essentially the piece of new cloth patched Opposition 
into the old garment, the new wine poured oftheFrench 
into old leathern bottles only to burst them. new & patH- 
In its relation to the conquered race it had arch- 
no more stability than the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem 
(p. 107) ; and in itself it gave play to all the jealousies 
and quarrels which disgraced the feudal states of 
Western Europe. The strife began before the landing of 
Morosini. While yet at Rome, he had been warned by 
the pope to have nothing to do with the schemes of 
Venetian statesmen, and to show no preference in his new 
home for men of Venetian birth. In Venice he was com- 
pelled to abjure this promise, to swear that Venetians 



1 66 The Crusades. ch. x. 

alone should be canons of Sancta Sophia, and that, so far 
as his power might extend, he would strive to secure to a 
Venetian the succession to his patriarchate. Nothing 
more would be needed beyond the rumours of these in- 
trigues to rouse the suspicions of the French clergy : and 
accordingly, when Morosini approached the shore, not one 
obeyed his summons. To the Greeks the sleek and 
beardless prelate and his coarse-looking and beardless 
priests were alike repulsive. Morosini was left almost 
alone. He threatened with excommunication the clergy 
who would not admit his authority ; his menaces were 
treated with indifference or contempt. 

The conquerors had indeed won for themselves a 
domain almost appalling in its extent ; and the sharing of 
Partition of tne P r ^ ze was soon followed by the quarrelling 
the empire of robbers over their booty. Not three months 
cmsafing 6 after the fall of Constantinople the emperor 
chiefs. Yed his forces against his vassal Boniface of 

Montferrat, now the lord of Thessalonica : and the quarrel 
which was for the time made up was a significant token 
of the future history of his empire. The time was come 
for carrying out the compact made before the conquest. 
The aged Dandolo became despot of Romania, and in 
his new sovereignty he died, leaving to his countrymen 
the task of strengthening and extending their commercial 
empire by means of a chain of factories along the main- 
land and in the islands of the Adriatic and the Archi- 
pelago. The task was too costly even for the resources of 
Venice : and the commercial republic was constrained to 
govern her possessions by that feudal system to which 
her constitution was utterly opposed. For Boniface, the 
chivalrous rival of Baldwin, the lordship of Crete had less 
attractions than the kingdom of the Macedonian Thes- 
salonica : but his wanderings did not end here. Thebes, 
Athens, Argos, received his followers within their gates ; 



i204. The Latin Empire of Constantinople. 167 

and the resistance of Corinth and Napoli was speedily 
overpowered. The count of Blois received the dukedom 
of Nicaea (Nikaia, Nice), the count of St. Pol the lordship 
of Demetria, a city about twenty miles to the south of 
Adrianople, while Geoffrey of Villehardouin, now mar- 
shal of Romania as well as of Champagne, found a splen- 
did home on the banks of the Hebros. 

But the power of the old Byzantine Caesars was rather 
divided than crushed by the Latin crusaders. The 
wretched Mourzoufie, caught by the Latins, 
was hurled from the Theodosian column ; but Rise of new 
Theodore Lascaris, the son-in-law of the N^Trebi- 
Alexios who dethroned Isaac Angelus, estab- zond > and 
lished himself at Nicaea first as despot then 
as emperor, and in no long time had extended his power 
from the Bosporos to the banks of the Meander. Other 
parts of the empire were likewise in revolt against the 
new Caesars. The governors of Trebizond, without 
changing their titles at first, became sovereigns of their 
province, and laid the foundations of their later empire. 
A power not less formidable sprung up in Epirus (Epeiros) 
and had its centre within the walls of that city of Durazzo 
which is specially associated with the history of Bohe- 
mond. The conquerors were now to feel the effects of 
feudal subordination, which was only another name for 
real anarchy. The terror which they had inspired when 
their combined forces assailed the walls of Constanti- 
nople was rapidly lessened when their dispersal betrayed 
their scanty powers of cohesion, and when encounters in 
the field proved them to be not always irresistible. 

The storm burst on the Latins from a 

i-ii -it -.,-./- . Massacre of 

quarter in which they had not looked for it. the Latins 

The chief of the Bulgarians, John or Calo- %££%&? 

John, had at first greeted Baldwin with the Bulgarian 
freedom of an equal as well as the heartiness 



1 68 The Crusades. ch.x. 

of a friend ; but the retort that in the count of Flanders 
he must recognise his emperor roused a resentment which 
led him to make common cause with the insurgent Greeks. 
Waiting until Baldwin's brother Henry had with a large 
force crossed the Hellespont, he gave the signal for 
slaughter, and the Latins were forthwith cut down in the 
towns and villages of Thrace. Baldwin at once sent a 
messenger to recall his brother ; but before he could 
return, he set out with 140 knights and their retinues, 
followed by the aged Dandolo. The force was perilously 
small ; but good order and discipline might have more 
than compensated this disadvantage. All desultory 
action was forbidden ; the order was disregarded by the 
a.d. 1205. count of Blois who was himself surprised and 
April. slain, while the emperor Baldwin became a 

Captivity of . ' 

the emperor prisoner. The army was saved by the wis- 
Baidwm. dom ^ fortitude, and heroism of Villehardouin, 

whose masterly retreat is perhaps the only piece of true 
generalship in the whole military history of the crusades. 
But the empire was already little more than the shadow 
of its former self. A few fortresses on the shores of the 
Propontis now formed with the capital the imperial 
domain of the Latins. Calo-John was in the full tide of 
success. The pope, for whom he had but a little while ago 
professed a deep devotion, entreated him to have mercy 
on his enemies and to release the emperor. This last re- 
Death of quest was, he said, beyond mortal power to 
Baldwin. grant. Baldwin had already died in prison. 

How, no one ever knew. Stories grew up which told of 
horrible barbarities practised on the defenceless captive ; 
and the common belief that great men cannot die brought 
forward twenty years later in Flanders a man who gave 
himself out as the true sovereign of the country, and won 
from thousands a faith not to be shaken by the discovery 
of his imposture and the ignominious death which fol- 
lowed it. 



i207. The Latin Empire of Constantinople. 169 

The career of Alexander the Great and of Baldwin was 
cut short at the same early age. The reign of Baldwin's 
younger brother Henry was extended over ten 
years, and closed when he was forty-four years (brother of 
old. It began in darkness and gloom, it was ^ n a ' d e N r0 r' f 
followed by a time of overwhelming disasters: Constanti- 
but in itself it is the only period in the history 
of the Latin empire on which our thoughts may rest 
with anything approaching to satisfaction. Twelve 
months had passed while he acted as regent for his 
brother before he could be brought to believe that Bald- 
win no longer lived, and to assume the imperial title. 
Dandolo had already ended his long life at 
Constantinople. Boniface of Montferrat was 
soon to follow him, after his disputes with the emperor on 
points of homage had been settled by the marriage of 
Henry to his daughter Agnes. Boniface died 
in a war with Calo-John ; and with him 
his friend Geoffrey of Villehardouin disappears from 
history. 

But the tide was now to turn against the Bulgarian 
chief. The Greeks, who had looked to Calo-John as to 
one who would restore to them their freedom Assass i na . 
and their laws, found that they were dealing tion of 

. , ' . , ° Calo-John. 

with a savage whose mind ran on massacre 
and on those wholesale deportations of conquered tribes 
which have in all ages delighted the hearts of Eastern 
despots. The cruelties of the tyrant taught them that in 
the Latin emperor they might perhaps find a friend. At 
their prayer for help Henry took the field with a dan- 
gerously scanty force: and the retreat of Calo-John was 
probably caused less through fear of the Latin army than 
by the desertion of his Comans. Not long afterwards 
the Bulgarian chief was killed in his tent, while besieging 
Thessalonica. With his successor Vorylas Henry made 



170 The Crusades. ch. x. 

an honourable peace ; a treaty with the Greek sovereigns 
of Nice and Epirus (Epeiros) left to him undisturbed pos- 
session of an ample territory ; and the rest of his life was 
spent in conscientious efforts for its just and orderly 
Wise government. Clearly seeing the fatal folly of 

government that exclusive system which was so dear to 
peror the hearts of crusaders generally, Henry re- 

Henry, solved to govern Greeks through Greeks. The 

great offices of the state were thrown open to them, in 
great part filled by them. To the tyranny which re- 
pressed the use of the Eastern liturgy and thrust on the 
people a theological dogma he opposed a passive resist- 
ance : to the theory of papal supremacy he gave a signifi- 
cant answer by having his throne placed on the right hand 
of the patriarch's chair in the church of Sancta Sophia. 
His presumption was rebuked by Innocent III. ; but 
Henry was none the more deterred from prohibiting the 
alienation of fiefs which was adding only to the wealth 
and power of the clergy. 

Henry died at Thessalonica ; and with him the male 
line of the counts of Flanders came to an end. But the 
a.d. 1207 daughter of Henry's sister Yolande was mar- 

Death of ried to Andrew, king of Hungary ; and to the 

Latins it seemed that the choice of a powerful 
sovereign as their emperor might be the salvation of their 
dynasty. The prize had ncattractions for Andrew : and 
the offer of the crown was in a fatal hour accepted by 
Peter of Peter of Courtenay, count of Auxerre, the hus- 

Courtenay band of Yolande herself, who had won his 

emperor of . . _ , , 

Constanti- spurs in a crusade not against Turks and 
nople. Saracens, but against the Albigensian heretics 

of Provence. To raise a decent force which might guard 
him on the march to his capital Peter was compelled to 
sell or mortgage the best part of his territories ; and when 
be reached Rome, the pope, Honorius III., careful to 



1207-19. The Latin Empire of Constantinople. 171 

avoid anything which might seem to recognise his 
authority over the old imperial city, crowned him in a 
church without the walls. The means of transport across 
the sea he had been obliged to seek from the Venetians. 
They were granted, but under conditions similar to those 
which had been imposed on Baldwin and his allies. He 
must recover Durazzo for the republic, as for her they had 
conquered Zara. His success was not greater A D I2i8 
than that of Bohemond, and his miserable Captivity 
march from Durazzo led him into trackless ptterof 
mountains, amongst which he fell into the Courtenay. 
hands of his enemies. With him the papal legate became 
a captive. 

At once the pope threatened to place the Epirot sove- 
reign under his ban ; but it soon became evident that his 
anxiety was for the legate, not for the emperor. The 
former was released ; the latter was probably murdered in 
prison ; and the successor of Henry died without seeing 
the city of which he was the Caesar. 

While Peter of Courtenay pined in his dungeon, his 
wife Yolande, in the midst of her grief, anxiety, and appre- 
hension, gave birth to Baldwin, the luckless child with 
whom the Latin dynasty was to reach its close. Death 
soon brought relief from her sorrows ; and the barons had 
again before them the task of choosing an emperor. 
Namur, the inheritance of Yolande, had passed to her 
eldest son Philip, who was too prudent to change the sub- 
stance of his principality for the shadow of Robert, 
an empire. The crown was offered to her emperor of 

r Constanti- 

seconds on Robert, who set out on his journey, nopie. 
by way of Germany and the Danube, through the territo- 
ries of his brother-in-law the king of Hun- 
gary. He was crowned by the patriarch in A ' D * I21Q ' 
Justinian's church ; but the pageant preceded an endless 
line of disasters. Demetrius, the son and successor of 



172 The Crusades. ch. x. 

the marquis Boniface, was expelled from his kingdom, of 

Thessalonica : and the remains of Asiatic territory still 

in the hands of the Latins were seized by the 

A.D. 1224. ' 

Nicaean emperor John Vataces, the son-in-law 
of Theodore Lascaris. Still more ominous was the fact 
that these conquests were achieved by the aid of French 
mercenaries. The house was indeed divided against 
itself; and the champions of the cross had learnt the art 
of turning their arms to profit in the service of the 
highest bidder or the most successful general. To disas- 
ter in the field was added vice, with its issue crime, in 
the palace : and Robert, in an agony of grief and rage 
at the mutilation of a woman for whom he had wished 
to thrust aside his wife, the daughter of Vataces, 
sought comfort and redress at the feet of the Roman 
pontiff. He was told to go back to his capital and there 

do his duty. The weight of his humiliation 

A.D. 1228. J & 

was a burden beyond his strength. Death 
relieved him from the duty of obedience to the papal 
order. 

Baldwin, the youngest son of Yolande, was a child only 
seven years old when Robert died ; and the barons of 
johnofBri- the Latin empire felt that the imperial power, 
penS ofCon- shadowy though it had become, could not 
staminopie. yet be entrusted to his hands. They re- 
solved to offer it in the mean season to John of Brienne, 
titular king of Jerusalem, by right of his wife Mary, 
daughter of Isabella (p. 139) and Conrad of Montferrat, 
and granddaughter of king Almeric. This veteran warrior, 
now more than eighty years of age, whom in his earlier years 
we shall meet in the crusade of Frederick II., was induced 
to accept the title cf emperor on condition that Baldwin 
should marry his second daughter and succeed him on 
the throne. But his energy was impaired, whether by age 
or by desire for rest. He did not reach Constantinople 



122S-61. TJic Latin Empire of Constantinople. 173 

till 1231, two years after his election : and the Greek tra- 
ditions are silent about the exploits which he K D ' 
is said by the Latins to have performed during Siege of 
a siege of the city by the forces of Vataces nopieby 1 " 
and the Bulgarian chief Azan. On his death Vatace& 
began the ignominious reign of the second Baldwin, a 
reign of twenty-five years, most of which were spent in 
foreign lands for the purpose of exciting pity a.d. 1237- 
for his sorrows and raising alms to relieve his Baldwin 
needs. His success was not equal to his im- n., empe- 

t/- 1 m e t ! • , ror of Con- 

portumties. If at the council of Lyons which staminople. 
excommunicated Frederick II. he was placed on the right 
hand of the pope, at Dover he was asked how he could 
presume without leave to enter an independent territory. 
In England he received 700 marks : at Rome Efforts to 
the pontiff loaded him with indulgences and raise money, 
proclaimed a crusade in his favour. The sainted Louis of 
France was moved to tears of sympathy by the story of his 
wrongs : but his arms were directed to Egypt, not to Con- 
stantinople. Still, by alienating his marquisate of Namur 
and his lordship of Courtenay, he contrived to return to 
the East with an army of 30,000 men. But the next scene 
of his history exhibits him as the ally of the sultan of 
Iconium, on whom he bestowed his niece, and of the Co- 
mans, in whose pagan rites he did not hesitate to take 
part. His needs became more pressing, and he bethought 
him of the sacred relics which still remained Sale of 
in the churches of Constantinople. Of these rellcs - 
the most precious was the crown of thorns which had 
circled the brow of the Redeemer, and for which he re- 
ceived from Louis IX. 10,000 marks of silver. At smaller 
prices he disposed of the baby linen used by the Virgin 
Mary in the cave of Betlehem, the lance and sponge used 
in the Passion on Calvary, and the rod of Moses, all of 
which, with some others, were transferred to the exquisite 



i;?4 The Crusades. 



CII. x. 



chapel in Paris which still attests the munificence and 
perfect taste of the sainted king of France. 

Meanwhile the power of Vataces was being extended 
on every side ; and only his submission to the Roman 
doctrine respecting the procession of the Holy 
DeatJfoT Spirit was needed to secure a papal declara- 
Vataces. t j on - m j^ s f avour# That submission was not 

made ; and his death brought a respite to the Latin em- 
peror. But when Baldwin sent his envoys to see what 
territorial concessions could be obtained from Michael 
Paleologos, the colleague and guardian of John the grand- 
a.d. 1259. son of Vataces, they were curtly told that he 
SbSSS? would yield them not a foot of land. By the 
repelled by payment of an annual tribute amounting to 

Michael , , , • j r ■. 

Paleologos. the whole sum received from the customs 
and excise of Constantinople the Latin Caesar might 
secure peace : if he refused these terms, he must prepare 
for war. The great quarrel was soon decided. Michael 
had bestowed the title of Ca?sar on his general Alexios 
Strategopoulos ; and by his orders this general went to 
keep close watch on the capital, under the pledge that he 
would run no dangerous risks. He failed to keep his 
promise, and when with a scanty band of followers he 
clambered over the unguarded walls, he began to tremble 
at his Own rashness. But his volunteers (for so they were 
termed) would listen to no arguments for retreat. The die 
was cast, and the result was victory. The Greeks rose 
on all hands at the cry which called them to the rescue of 
their ancient empire ; the Genoese were not unwilling to 
take revenge upon their Venetian enemies ; and the Latin 
a.d. 1261. emperor with his chief vassals, embarking on 
Recovery of board the Venetian fleet, sailed first to Euboia 
Constant!- and thence to Italy. The capital of the Eastern 
Greeks 7 empire was freed from the presence and the 

yoke of its Western conquerors ; but for thirteen years 



1 26 1. The Latin Empire of Constantinople. 175 

longer Baldwin bore about with him an empty title which 
won for him the commiseration or the contempt of thousands 
who could not be brought to stir hand or foot in his ser- 
vice. His pretensions were maintained by his son Philip, 
and through his granddaughter Catharine passed to her 
husband Charles of Valois, brother of Philip the Fair of 
France. 

Next after, perhaps even before, the deliverance of the 
Holy Land and the restoration of the Latin kingdom of 
Jerusalem, the wish dearest to the heart of Permanent 
Innocent III. was the recovery of the Greek a , liei, . ation of 

, ' the Ease from 

communion to the unity of the Church. He the West. 
was also statesman enough to see that his wishes would 
best be realised by a closer union between the subjects 
of the Eastern and the Western empires. The deathblow to 
these hopes and yearnings was dealt by his own crusade. 
In itself, and in the events which followed it, not a single 
thing was lacking which could exaggerate suspicion into 
vehement jealousy, and intensify dislike into burning hatred. 
There was the merciless intolerance which regarded Chris- 
tian patriarchs with their clergy and their laity as heathens 
because they questioned the supremacy of the pope and 
refused to add one word to one proposition in the Nicene 
creed. There was the cruelty which intruded strangers 
into the places of those who had taught and ministered 
to the people, and which suppressed a ritual hallowed by 
the associations of ages. There was the gross injustice 
which thrust Greeks out of every high, or responsible, or 
lucrative office, and which imposed on them a system 
of law utterly alien to their wishes, thoughts, and habits. 
There was the savage fury which had made the streets of 
the capital run with blood, and defiled its sanctuaries 
with blasphemy and massacre. Last, but perhaps not 
least, was the brutality which had shattered or committed 
to the flames all that was beautiful in art, costly in mate- 



1 76 The Crusades. ch. xi. 

rials, exquisite in workmanship, precious from its rarity or 
the absolute impossibility ot restoring it. The tombs of 
the emperors were burst open and rifled : the master- 
pieces of ancient sculptors were thrown down and shat- 
tered. In the Venetians alone the impulse to destroy was 
weaker than the temptation to theft, and the horses of 
Lysippos, borne across the sea to Venice, still stand above 
the gorgeous portals of the basilica of St. Mark. The 
Greeks were left with a bitter hatred of the laws, the cus- 
toms, the government of Latin Christendom ; and an 
impassable gulf remained yawning between the churches 
of the East and the West, which no efforts have thus far 
been able to close or to bridge over. 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE SIXTH CRUSADE. 



The infatuation by which in every instance the champions 
of the cross had nullified or thrown away the advantages 
Chief gained by their victories was to be shown not 

tfckbcd/* ^ ess P ers istently in the sixth crusade. But 
crusade. the short-sighted obstinacy of the mass was 

to be brought out in more prominent relief by its contrast 
with the moderation and sagacity of the great sovereign 
whose name is especially associated with this enterprise. 
In the career of this remarkable man we have a picture 
in which we see running together or side by side the lines 
which belong to the old order of things with others which 
seem to belong exclusively to the modern civilisation of 
Europe. The struggle between Frederick II. and 
Gregory IX. anticipated in more than one of its features 
the struggle between Leo X. and Luther. • 



1204- 



The Sixth Crusade. lyy 



The famine which Dandolo urged on the leaders of 
the fifth crusade (p. 150) as a reason for delaying their 
voyage to Palestine till the spring which fol- De . 
lowed the conquest of Zara, pressed less of the Latins 
heavily on the Latin Christians in the Holy 
Land than the destruction wrought by an earthquake 
which laid many cities in ruins and which was regarded 
as a presage of the last judgement. In spite of this belief 
much money and labour was spent in repairing the shat- 
tered walls of Acre ; and amongst the captives impressed 
for the work was, it is said, the Persian poet Saadi. 

Both sides in fact were greatly weakened and de- 
pressed : and the tidings that Constantinople was in the 
hands of Boniface, Dandolo, and Baldwin A _ 

' A.D. 1204. 

carried with them for Saphadin a conclusive Truce be- 

r it r tweenSapha- 

reason for concluding a peace of six years din and the 
with the Christians. But before the six years Christians. 
had come to an end the death of Almeric and his wife 
had left to Mary, the daughter of Isabella and 
Conrad of Tyre, the titular sovereignty of 
Jerusalem. Unable to find on the spot a man of sufficient 
energy and ability to share with her the shadowy dignity, 
the barons invoked the aid of the French king Philip 
Augustus to find her a husband. His choice fell on 
John of Brienne, who promised to lead a powerful army 
to Palestine within two years. The prospect of this for- 
midable increase to the strength of his enemies led 
Saphadin to propose a renewal of the peace, and to give 
as guarantees of his good faith any ten castles which they 
might choose to name. As we might expect, the ap- 
proval of the Teutonic knights and the Hospitallers 
called forth the angry protests of the Templars and the 
clergy : and the decision was given for war. 

Three hundred knights only accompanied John of 
Brienne when he set out for Palestine. In England the 

N 



178 The Crusades. ch. xi. 

wretched John was defying the pope while the kingdom 
for his sake lay under the papal interdict ; the French king 
was more anxious to turn that interdict to his own advan- 
tage than to face once more the perils of a distant enter- 
prise ; and for the time even Innocent III. felt that the 
chastisement of Christian heretics was a more 

A.D. I2IO. 

John of pressing duty than the deliverance of the Holy 

riSE? king Sepulchre. Hence the marriage of John of 
of Jerusalem. B r j cnnc to Mary, and their coronation as king 
and queen of Jerusalem, were soon followed by the sterner 
business of war. In his encounters with Saphadin his 
exploits may have equalled those of Tancred ; but he was 
compelled to write and tell the pope that the Latin king- 
dom was attenuated to the shadow of a shade. 

His entreaties roused in the pope the old crusading 
spirit. Innocent revoked the indulgences which had 



Zeal of In- 



m 



ade the crusade against the Albigenses 



nocent in. attractive as the crusade against the Saracens ; 
SngTnew and in his encyclical letter he declared that 
crusade. t ^ e Moslem power was tottering and ready to 

vanish away. It had lasted 666 years, the mystic number 
which showed it to be the Beast of the Apocalypse. A 
little while ago he had written to the sultan of Aleppo to 
thank him for his moderation to the Christians and his 
respect for their religion. He now demanded of Saphadin 
the peaceable and immediate surrender of all Palestine, 
as a country from which he was deriving far more of 
annoyance than of profit. 

The crusade which Innocent now wished to set in 
Robert of motion was preached in France by Robert of 
Courcon. Courcon, an Englishman whom he had made 

his legate. This pupil of Fulk of Neuilly had inherited all 
his earnestness with some portion of his eloquence ; nor, 
if the numbers whom he enrolled as pilgrims be taken as 
a test, was his success much less splendid. But in truth 



1210-1217. The Sixth Crusade. jyg 

the barons and knights who engaged in these expeditions 
were getting tired of the zeal which invited the maimed, 
the halt, the blind, and the leper to take the kingdom of 
heaven by violence ; and the same charge which had been 
heard in the days of Fulk was now urged with greater force 
against his disciple. Robert was convicted of diverting 
to other purposes money given solely for the recovery of 
the Holy Land ; but he had a firm friend in Innocent 
who, in 12 1 8, appointed him the colleague of Pelagius, 
bishop of Albano, in his legatine commission. 

A few months sufficed after the council of Clermont to 
get together and send forth the armies of the first crusade : 
for these later enterprises the time of preparation was 
extending to years. In his sermons preached a .d. 1215. 
before the fourth council of Lateran Innocent Fourt !l . 

council of 

declared his intention of accompanying the Lateran. 

champions of the cross to the scene of their exploits ; and 

the troubadours in their songs extolled him as their firm 

and courageous guide. But another year had 

passed before the king of a people who had A '°' I2I< 

done what they could to bar the way of the first crusaders 

was prepared to set forth on his eastward Crusade of 

journey. The ships of Venice conveyed jf in dre fH 

Andrew, king of Hungary, first to Cyprus, and gary. 

thence to Palestine, where an unsuccessful attack on a 

tower or castle on Mount Thabor seems to have disgusted 

him with the undertaking. He determined to 

return to Hungary, and he reached home with 

scant glory, but rich in relics gathered in Armenia and 

Greece. 

In the following year another force, which had been 
brought together at Cologne and on its way had done 
some work in Portugal by taking Alcazar from the Moors, 
joined the Templars and Teutonic knights who had forti- 
fied a post on mount Carmel. These warriors now in- 



1 80 The Crusades. ch. xi. 

clined to the policy of Almeric I. which had aimed atattack- 
a d 1218 m & ana ^ recovering Palestine through Egypt. 

sie.^e of The siege of Damietta was begun ; the castle 

was soon taken ; and the Christians were still 
further aided by the disorders which in Egypt followed 
Death of the death of Saphadin, and which drove his 
Saphadm. son ^ t jj e Egyptian sultan Kameel, to take 
refuge in Arabia. In the crusaders' camp success, as 
usual, produced arrogance and sloth. Their strength was 
increased by the arrival of new bands from France under 
the counts of Nevers and la Marche, from England under 
William Longsword, earl of Salisbury, and from Italy 
under the bishop of Albano and Robert of Courcon. The 
latter landed only to be cut off by sickness ; and while 
the other chiefs lay idle, Kameel was brought back to his 
throne by his brother the Syrian sultan Coradin. At 
length the siege was resumed with some vigour and good 
fortune : and Coradin, knowing the consequences which 
the fall of Damietta would bring with it, dismantled the 
Terms of walls of Jerusalem, and then offered peace to 
peace offered the besiegers, pledging himself to rebuild the 
walls which he had just thrown down, and to 
surrender not only the piece of the true cross but the 
whole of Palestine, with the exception of the castles of 
Karac and Montreal for the purpose of protecting the 
pilgrims for Mecca. 

Mad rejec- All that the crusaders could even hope to 

terms b^the accomplish was thus within their grasp. But 
crusaders. the eagerness of king John of Brienne, with 
the Teutonic knights and the French, to seize the prize 
Nov was f° r t ^ ie Templars and Hospitallers, with 
Fall of the Italians and the papal legate, a sufficient 

reason for rejecting the proffers of the sultan 
with indignant contempt. Folly carried the day. Damietta 
was taken, and the Christians hurried in to plunder and 



i22o. The Sixth Crusade. 181 

to slay. The pillage was abundant enough ; but in the 
work of slaughter pestilence had been beforehand with 
them. Three thousand only remained, it is said, of the 
70,000 who were shut up in the city at the beginning of 
the siege, and to these plague-stricken wretches life was 
promised on condition that they should clear the streets 
and houses of the dead bodies of their kinsfolk. 

The crusaders had everything once more in their 
hands ; but the winter was allowed to pass by without 
further action. When spring came round A . D . I220 . 
the legate, in opposition to the remonstrances chJSj-^* 6 
of John of Brienne, insisted on attempting for Cairo. 
the conquest of Egypt. On their march to Cairo they 
received from the sultan Kameel the same The old 
offers which they had rejected during the terms again 
siege of Damietta ; and they rejected them re)ec 
again. But the Nile was fast rising. The Egyptians 
opened the sluices ; the camp of the crusaders was 
inundated; their tents and baggage swept Ruin of the 
away. It was now the turn of the legate to crusaders - 
sue for peace, and he offered to surrender Damietta. In 
the Saracen camp it was no easy task for the sultan 
Kameel to repress the stern indignation with which many 
of the chiefs demanded the utter destruction of the enemy. 
He urged the vast importance of doing nothing which 
should excite fresh crusades in Europe, while Syria was 
menaced and ravaged by Tartar invasions, and of re- 
covering Damietta without a blow from a garrison strong 
enough to sustain a siege as long as that which had come 
to an end a few months ago. 

The triumph of the Egyptian sultan seemed to be 
complete ; but he had now to encounter an Frederick 
enemy of a very different temper. At the age JJ^ of^Bar- 
of eighteen Frederick, the son of the infamous barossa. 
Henry VI. and grandson of Frederick Barbarossa, had 



82 The Crusades. 



CH. XI. 



been summoned by the pope to assume the imperial 
crown which Otho of Brunswick, the son of 
Henry the Lion, was pronounced to have 
forfeited by his misdeeds. It was the old story. The 
strife between pope and antipope was but a reflexion of 
the almost fiercer strife of rival emperors ; and in this 
The popes struggle the pope naturally inclined to that 
and the em- side from which the Church was likely to 
reap the most advantage. Otho, the nephew 
of Richard Cceur de Lion, came of a house which had 
been generally loyal and faithful to the Roman pontiffs ; 
his rival belonged to the Swabian house of Hohenstaufen, 
at whose hands the popes had experienced more of 
enmity than of friendship. The remembrance of the 
days of Frederick Barbarossa was vivid in the mind of 
Innocent III., to whom the two emperors 
appealed after their coronation. The delibera- 
tion was grave and long ; but the issue was not doubtful. 
Otho's rival Philip was ' an obstinate persecutor of the 
Church,' and he was even then scheming to deprive the 
pontiff of his kingdom of Sicily. He must be put down 
before he could reach his full strength ; and therefore the 
pope declared himself for Otho, ' himself devoted to the 
Church, by his mother's side from the royal house of 
England, by his father from the duke of Saxony, all loyal 
sons of the Church. Him, therefore, we proclaim king ; 
him we summon to take on himself the imperial crown.' 
Innocent, like the frogs in the fable, was only exchanging 
Otho of king Log for king Stork. The reign of Otho 

Brunswick. was a p er i d of desperate strife and anarchy 
in Germany, of desperate struggles on his own part 
to throw off the papal yoke. The pope turned his eye 
on the youthful Frederick, then basking in the sunshine 
of his Sicilian paradise and giving promise of the brilliant 
qualities of his nature which were afterwards to be sullied 



I200-I22I. 



The Sixth Crusade. 



by darker lines of angry passion. In 12 12 Frederick 
was chosen emperor at Frankfort. In 12 14 his victory 
at Bouvines shattered the power of Otho. 
The gratitude of Frederick for the favour of Rutted 
the pope had been shown by taking the cru- Bouvines - 
sader's vow and pledging himself to lead an army for the 
recovery of the Holy Land. While his rival Otho lived, 
it was impossible for him to fulfil his promise. Two' 
years before his death Innocent III. had passed away 
from the scene of proud dominion and un- 
ceasing toil, and the more moderate and HonoriSs' 
kindly Honorius III. sat in his seat. In IIL pope ' 
courteous language which might pass for that of 
friendship, the pope besought him to march to the rescue 
of the Holy Sepulchre; but the dark shadows were 
already stealing across the clear sky. Without asking 
the sanction of the pope Frederick by a compact made 
with his vassals and prelates at the Diet of Frankfort 
procured the election of his son Henry to the 
crown of Germany. Honorius expressed his A '°' I22 °' 
displeasure at a step which seemed designed to unite 
permanently the Sicilian kingdom with the empire. 
Frederick hastened to say that he had no such wish, and 
that Sicily should revert to the pope if he should die 
without lawful heirs. When, a little while 
later, he was crowned with his queen by the Nov ' 22 * 
pope in the church of St. Peter's, Frederick promised 
that part of his army should be ready for the crusade in 
March of the following year, while he himself would 
follow in August with the rest. 

But Frederick had enough, and more than enough, to 
do in dealing with the turbulent barons of 
Apulia and in guarding against Saracen in- Loss '(J 21 ' 
surrection in Sicily. A fleet of forty ships Damietta - 
was sent to no purpose : and the tidings of the loss of 



1 84 The Crusades. ch. xi. 

Damietta were construed as an expression of divine dis- 
pleasure for his slackness. It was clear that only a vast 
army under a skilful general could turn the scale in favour 
of the Latin Christians of Palestine : but nothing was 
said of the besotted folly which had more than once flung 
aside all the advantages which could possibly be gained 
by the most successful crusade. Such an army could not, 
however, be got together in a month or in a year. The 
a.d. 1222. decision was postponed from a meeting at 
April. Veroli to a meeting at Verona which never 

took place. When next the pope and emperor met at 
Treaty of Ferentino (March 1223), it was agreed that 
Ferentmo. tw0 years more should be spent in prepara- 
tions, and that Frederick, now a widower, should marry 
Iolante, the daughter of the titular king of Jerusalem, and 
thus as his heir go forth to the maintenance of his own 
rights. King John of Brienne, who was present at the 
debate, started at once on a mission in which he hoped to 
achieve a success not unlike that of the hermit Peter, of 
Bernard, or Fulk of Neuilly. But the times were changed, 
and king John could only report to the pope the impossi- 
bilitv of moving at the time named in the treaty of Feren- 
tino. A new agreement was made at San 

A.D 1225. & 

July. Germano, postponing the departure of the 

SanGer- army for two years longer. Four months 
mano. ] ater Frederick married Iolante, and pro- 

ceeded at once to deprive his father-in-law of his shadowy 
royalty. John of Brienne, he insisted, was king only by 
right of his wife : by her death the title had passed to his 
„ , . , daughter and to him as her husband, and 

Frederick, * ' 

king of he, Frederick, was thus king of Naples, 

cily^Sd l " Sicily, and Jerusalem. John was furious, but 
Jerusalem. j^ cou id revenge himself only by accusations, 
whether true or false, of gross and habitual profligacy on 
the part of the young emperor. 



1 222-1227- The Sixth Crusade. 185 

' Never did pope love emperor as he loved his son 
Frederick.' Such were the words of Honorius when he 
parted from him after his coronation at Rome. Before 
the close of his pontificate in 1227 the gentle pontiff had 
to address not a few stern remonstrances to his loving 
son. The real struggle was reserved for the papacy of 
the cardinal Ugolino, a kinsman of Innocent 

07 A.D. 1227. 

III., who assumed the triple crown at the age Gregory IX. 
of eighty years. To an eloquence unrivalled pupe ' 
in his own day, to a profound knowledge of the canon law 
and the decretals, Gregory IX. united the monastic severity 
of Gregory the Great and the inexorable will of Gregory 
VII. The sovereign with whom he had to deal was still a 
young man of only thirty-three, a young man with whose 
wishes and dreams, with whose tastes and accomplishments, 
Gregory had nothing whatever in common. Frederick 
had been born and bred in Sicily ; and in the voluptuous 
splendours of that beautiful island, in the luxury of its 
sunshine, in the gorgeous profusion and glory of its vege- 
tation, his youth passed in a passion of delight, fed by the 
charms of music, poetry, painting, and a rich literature 
which laid at his feet the treasures of ancient knowledge. 
From the lays of the troubadour and the company of 
noble knights and fair women, Frederick could turn to 
men learned in the lore of the East and in the philosophy 
of Alexandria and Athens. His life was far from fault- 
less. With more truth it may be described as one of 
license which cast to the winds, at least for himself, the 
moral code of priests and monks, but a license to which 
all grossness and coarse rioting, all unrefined and boorish 
vices, were altogether abhorrent. Here in his southern 
paradise Frederick could say, with a freedom horrifying to 
the sacerdotal spirit of the age, that if God had seen his 
beautiful home he would never have chosen the barren 
land of Judasa for the abode of his own people. Here too 



1 86 The Crusades. ch.xi. 

he was subjected to influences which were likely to cul- 
tivate a temper far more disliked and dreaded by popes 
and their followers than irreverence or even blasphemous 
profanity. Around him were gathered populations brought 
from many lands, all softened by the genial and delicious 
climate. The Norman had here laid aside some of his 
northern roughness, and become an apt disciple of the 
gay science in which Frederick had won a foremost place. 
Even the Germans were toned down to something like 
decency of demeanour and language : and in contrast to 
these were numbers of Jews, who surpassed the Chris- 
tians as much in refinement and learning as in their 
wealth, and of Saracens not less polished, not less culti- 
vated, who delighted to call themselves subjects of 
Frederick and to submit themselves peaceably to his rule. 
Frederick was, in short, learning the dangerous lessons of 
toleration, and his eyes were being gradually opened to 
the perilous views which have become the orthodox 
creed of modern statesmen. As a ruler, he could survey 
without dislike the mingling of different religions, and see 
that an empire surpassing the wildest dreams of feudal 
grandeur could be achieved by the extension and freedom 
of a commerce spread over all portions of the earth. 
As a man of learning he could promote the cultivation of 
a philosophy which, whatever might be its merit, could 
not fail to set the mind working and accustom it to regard 
all questions as matters to be settled by reason and evi- 
dence, not by authority. A picture more repulsive to the 
mind of a man like Gregory IX. cannot well be imagined. 
The light-hearted enjoyment and the liberal government 
of the one were hopelessly opposed to the monastic gloom 
and ingrained despotism of the other. 

Frederick may have been slow in fulfilling his promise: 
there is no evidence that he ever deliberately intended tc 
break it. But he had no intention of wading through 



1 22 7. The Sixth Crusade. 187 

sea of blood if he could obtain his ends without striking 
a blow. He had already had some friendly intercourse 
with the Egyptian sultan : and from these relations he 
was hereafter to reap good fruit. For the present they 
served only to excite the anger of Gregory, whose patience 
was exhausted when at length Frederick a .d 1227. 
gathered his forces at Brundusium (Brindisi) Exramn f l ' n /' 

° V / cation 01 the 

only to see them decimated by fever, and emperor. 
when he himself, having set out with his fleet, was com- 
pelled to return after three days to the harbour of Otranto. 
On St. Michael's day the pope excommunicated Frederick 
with bell, book, and candle. In his discourse to the 
Apulian bishops, the subjects of Frederick, he spoke of 
the tender care with which the Church had nursed him in 
his infancy and childhood in order that he might fight the 
serpents and basilisks whom she had unwittingly fostered 
in her bosom. She had borne him on her shoulders ; she 
had rescued him from those who would have slain him; 
she had hoped to find in him a protecting, staff and support. 
These hopes had been cheated. Frederick had purposely 
exposed his army at Brundusium to pestilence, and after pre- 
tending to set off on his voyage for Palestine had returned 
under a false plea of illness to the luxuries of the baths 
of Puteoli. On St. Martin's day and again on Christmas 
day the excommunication was repeated with all its appal- 
ling ceremonies. The sentence was by the pope's orders 
to be published in all churches of his obedience. By one 
of the clergy of Paris, who professed to know merely the 
fact of the quarrel and nothing of the merits of the case, 
it was published as a sentence of condemnation against 
the one who might be in the wrong. ' I excommunicate 
the aggressor, and I absolve the sufferer.' Frederick ap- 
pealed not to the pope, but to the sovereigns of Christen- 
dom. His illness had been real, the accusations of the 
pope wanton and cruel. ' The Christian charity which 



1 88 The Crusades. ch.xl 

should hold all things together is dried up at its source, 
in its stem, not in its branches. What had the pope done 
in England but stir up the barons against John, and 
then abandon them to death or ruin? The whole 
world paid tribute to his avarice. His legates were 
everywhere, gathering where they had not sown, and 
reaping where they had not strawed.' But although he 
thus dealt in language as furious as that of the pope, 
the thought of breaking definitely with him and of 
casting aside his crusading vow as a worthless 
mockery never seems to have entered his mind. He 
undertook to bring his armies together again with all 
speed, and to set off on his expedition. His promise 
only brought him into fresh trouble with the 

AD. 1228. 

pope, who in the Holy Week next following 
laid under interdict every place in which Frederick might 
happen to be. If this censure should be treated with 
Departure of contempt, his subjects were at once absolved 
from Bran- ^ rom tne ^ r allegiance. The emperor went on 
dusium. steadily with his preparations, and then went 

to Brundusium. He was met by papal messengers who 
strictly forbade him to leave Italy until he had offered 
satisfaction for his offences against the Church. In his 
turn Frederick, having sailed to Otranto, sent his own 
envoys to the pope to demand the removal of the inter- 
dict ; and these, of course, were dismissed with contempt. 
In September the emperor landed at Ptolemais ; but 
the emissaries of the pope had preceded him, and he 
Landing of found himself under the ban of the clergy 
Frederick at and shunned by their partisans. The pa- 

Ptolemais. . . , , r , ... . 

triarch and the masters of the military orders 
were to see that none served under his polluted banners. 
The charge was given to willing servants : but Frederick 
found friends in the Teutonic knights under their grand- 
master Herman of Salza, as well as with the body of pil- 



1228. The Sixth Crusade. 189 

grims generally. He determined to possess himself of 
Joppa, and summoned all the crusaders to his aid. The 
Templars refused to stir, if any orders were to be issued in 
his name ; and Frederick agreed that they should run in 
the name of God and Christendom. But while the enemy 
was aided greatly by the divisions among the Christians, 
the death of the Damascene sultan Moadhin was of little 
use to Frederick. The Egyptian sultan Kameel was now in 
a position of greater independence, and his eagerness for 
an alliance with the emperor had rapidly cooled down. 
Frederick on his side still resolved to try the effect of ne- 
gotiation. His demands extended at first, it 
is said, to the complete restoration of the Fe^. 7z. 9 ' 
Latin kingdom, and ended, if we are to be- ^eeWred- 
lieve Arabian chroniclers, in almost abject erick -™dthe 
supplications. At length the treaty was signed. Kameel. 
It surrendered to the emperor the whole of Jerusalem 
except the Temple or mosque of Omar, the keys of which 
were to be retained by the Saracens; but Christians under 
certain conditions might be allowed to enter it for the 
purpose of prayer. It further restored to the Christians 
the towns of Jaffa, Bethlehem, and Nazareth. 

To Frederick the conclusion of this treaty was a reason 
for legitimate satisfaction. It enabled him to hasten back 
to his own dominions, where a papal army 
was ravaging Apulia and threatening Sicily. jSiS^L"* 
One task only remained for him in the East. He must 
pay his vows at the Holy Sepulchre. But here also the 
hand of the pope lay heavy upon him. Not merely Jeru- 
salem but the Sepulchre itself passed under the interdict 
as he entered the gates of the city, and the infidel Moslem 
saw the churches closed and all worship suspended at the 
approach of the Christian emperor. On Sunday, in his 
imperial robes and attended by a magnificent retinue, 
Frederick went to his coronation as king of Jerusalem in 



190 The Crusades. ch. xr. 

the church of the Sepulchre. Not a single ecclesiastic 
was there to take part in the ceremony. The archbishops 
of Capua and Palermo stood aloof, while Frederick, taking 
the crown from the high altar, placed it on his head. By 
his orders his friend Herman of Salza read an address in 
which the emperor acquitted the pope for his hard judge- 
ment of him and for his excommunication, and added 
that a real knowledge -of the facts would have led him to 
speak not against him, but in his favour. He confessed 
his desire to put to shame the false friends of Christ, his 
accusers and slanderers, by the restoration of peace and 
unity, and to humble himself before God and before his 
Vicar upon earth. 

From the Saracens he won golden opinions. The 
kadi silenced a muezzin who had to proclaim the hour of 
Moderation prayer from a minaret near the house in which 
of the em- the emperor lodged, because he added to his 
call the question, ' How is it possible that God 
had for his son Jesus the son of Mary?' Frederick 
marked the silence of the crier when the hour of prayer 
came round. On learning the cause he rebuked the kadi 
for neglecting on his account his duty and his religion, 
and warned him that if he should visit him in his king- 
dom he would find no such ill-judged deference. He 
showed no dissatisfaction, it is said, with the inscription 
which declared that Saladin had purified the city from 
those who worshipped many gods, or any displeasure 
when the Mahomedans in his train fell on their knees at 
the times for prayer. His thoughts about the Christians 
were shown, it was supposed, when, seeing the windows of 
the Holy Chapel barred to keep out the birds which might 
defile it, he asked, ' You may keep out the birds ; but how 
will you keep out the swine ? ' 

In glowing terms Frederick wrote to the sovereigns of 
Europe, announcing the splendid success which he had 



1229- The Sixth Crusade. 191 

achieved rather by the pen than by the sword. He scarcely 
knew what a rock of offence he had raised Condemna- 
up amongst Christian and Moslem alike. By ^"ty iy° 
a few words on a sheet of parchment the Gregory IX. 
Christian emperor had deprived his people of the hope of 
getting their sins forgiven by murdering unbelievers : by 
the same words the Moslem sultan had prevented his 
subjects from ensuring an entrance to the delights of pa- 
radise by the slaughter of the Nazarenes From Gerold, 
patriarch of Jerusalem, a letter went to the pope, full of 
virulent abuse of the emperor as a traitor, an apostate, and 
a robber ; but even before he received this letter Gregory 
had condemned what he chose to consider as a mon- 
strous attempt to reconcile Christ and Belial, and to set 
up Mahomed as an object of worship in the Temple cf 
God. l The antagonist of the cross,' he wrote, ' the enemy 
of the faith and of all chastity, the wretch doomed to hell, 
is lifted up for adoration, by a perverse judgement, and 
by an intolerable insult to the Saviour, to the lasting dis- 
grace of the Christian name and the contempt of all the 
martyrs who have laid down their lives to purify the Holy 
Land from the defilements of the Saracens.' 

But Frederick in his turn could be firm and unyielding. 
He returned from Jerusalem to Joppa, from Joppa to Pto- 
lemais ; and there learning that a proposal had R eturn of 
been made to establish a new order of knights, the emperor 
he declared that no one should without his crusaders 
consent levy soldiers within his dominion. to Eur °P c - 
Summoning all the Christians within the city to the 
broad plain without the gates, he spoke his mind freely 
about the conduct of the patriarch and the Templars, with 
all who aided and abetted them, and insisted that all the 
pilgrims, having now paid their vows, should return at once 
to Europe. On this point he was inexorable. His archers 
took possession of the churches ; two friars who denounced 



92 The Crusades. 



CH. XII. 



him from the pulpit were scourged through the streets ; 
the patriarch was shut up in his palace ; and the com- 
mands of the emperor were carried out. Frederick re- 
turned to Europe, to find that the pope had been stirring 
up Albert of Austria to rebel against him, and that the 
Renewed papal forces were in command of John of 
cation of' the Brienne, who may have been the author of 
emperor. the false news of Frederick's death, and who 

certainly proclaimed himself as the only emperor. To the 
pope Frederick sent his envoys, Herman of Salza at their 
head. They were dismissed with contempt ; and their 
master was again placed under the greater excommunica- 
tion with the Albigensians, the Poor Men of Lyons, the 
Arnoldists, and other heretics who in the eyes of the 
faithful were the worst enemies of the Christian church. 
Such was the reward of the man who had done more to- 
wards the re-establishment of the Latin kingdom in Pa- 
lestine than had been done by the lion-hearted Richard, 
and who, it may fairly be said, had done it without 
shedding a drop of blood. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE SEVENTH CRUSADE. 



The number of the crusades might be largely extended 
if we gave the name to all the minor expeditions to the 
Richard, ^ ol y Land in the intervals between the 

earl of greater enterprises to which the term has 

Cornwall. 



king of the been commonly applied. Yet the expedition 
Romans. led by Richardj earl of Cornwall, king of the 

Romans and brother of Henry III. of England, as being 



1 230-1236. The Seventh Crusade. 193 

scarcely less remarkable than that of Frederick II., and 
for the same reason, may fairly be reckoned as the 
seventh of these extravagant and ill-starred enterprises. 

Time had softened in some degree the spirit which 
had animated the first crusaders; but in the events which 
followed the return of Frederick we see some- Charges of 
thing like an honest reaction against the di- peculation 

. r . against the 

version to other purposes of money contn- pa pai col- 
buted for the deliverance of Palestine. These lectors - 
diversions had become so frequent that the papal collectors 
regarded it as an annoyance or an insult if any refused 
to commute by money payments their engagements as 
crusaders. 

The peace which the Egyptian sultan Kameel had 
made with Frederick was little more than a truce. It 
was to last for ten years : but even during that term 
the compact was kept with no rigid strictness a .d. 1230. 
perhaps on either side. Thousands of Chris- S- p t p h ° e S popl 
tians were slain, it is said, on their passage and the 
from Acre to Jerusalem, and envoys were the new cm- 
sent to Gregory IX. and to Frederick, with sade - 
whom he had been reconciled at Anagni, to entreat the 
equipment of another crusade. The crusade was enjoined 
accordingly, but, as it seemed, with little A D I23& _ 
sincerity ; and when the French barons, "39- 
headed by Theobald, count of Champagne and king of 
Navarre, and Hugh, duke of Burgundy, met in council at 
Lyons, they were commanded by the papal legate to 
adjourn their discussions and to return home. The 
request was peremptorily refused ; but when their plans 
seemed to be in all respects matured, the ambassadors of 
Frederick himself besought them to wait until he could 
give them effectual help. Even to this appeal they turned 
a deaf ear : and although Frederick charged his officers 
to withhold all aid from the crusaders, these barons still in- 

O 



IQ4 The C? -usades. ch. xir. 

sisted on carrying out their design and found their way 
Arrival of to Acre. Before they reached it, Kameel had 
the French seized Jerusalem and dismantled the tower of 
Acre. David ; and the crusaders had before them a 

task not less arduous than that which Godfrey of Bouillon 
Their com- an d his followers had to encounter. Their 
piete failure, failure was complete ; it can scarcely be said 
that they even attempted to grapple with it. 

The English crusade which under Richard of Cornwall 
a d 1240 and William Longsword (son of the earl of 
The English Salisbury, butnot earl of Salisbury himself) em- 
barked at Dover for France, and having jour- 
neyed across France set sail from Marseilles in spite of 
a papal prohibition, was followed by results far more solid. 
On reaching Acre, they found the affairs both of Christians 
and Moslems in a state of strange confusion through 
treaties which neither side was able strictly to carry out. 
But the quarrel which had broken out afresh 
between between the sultans of Egypt and Damascus 

Cornwall told g«atiy in their favour. The march of 
the Egyp- Richard to Jaffa led to negotiations, and by 
the treaty which followed them the Egyptian 
sultan granted him terms even more favourable than those 
which had been conceded to Frederick II. 

Palestine was once more virtually in the hands of the 
Christians, and in their hands it virtually remained, until, 
a.d. 1242. two years later, the Latin kingdom was again 
theKora£ f swept away by a foe more merciless than 
mans. an y which the crusaders had yet encountered. 

The brutal hordes, which Genghis Khan had set in motion 
from the remote wilds of Tartary, drove out from the 
Korasmian territories myriads of myriads scarcely less 
brutal than themselves. The fugitive Korasmians burst 
into Palestine. Jerusalem was deserted by its garrison, 
and the savages hastened to glut themselves with blood. 



1230-1245. TJic Eighth Crusade. 195 

The living were cut down, the dead torn from their graves, 
and thousands of pilgrims, decoyed back to the city by 
the display of crusading banners from the walls, furnished 
fresh victims for the awful sacrifice. In this Alliance of 
desperate strait the Templars made com- the Tem - , 

..,,,. . , plars and the 

mon cause with the Syrians. A battle was Syrians. 
fought in which the grand-masters of the Templars and 
the Hospitallers were slain, the only survivors being 
thirty-three Templars, sixteen Hospitallers, and three 
Teutonic knights. The Korasmians were for the present 
in league with the Egyptian sovereign ; but this harmony 
was soon followed by enmity. The Korasmians were 
defeated and scattered, and the tempest of barbarian 
invasion came to an end. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE EIGHTH CRUSADE. 



The havoc wrought by the Korasmian inroad was 
alleged by pope Innocent IV. as a reason for 
sending forth another crusade. In a council Council of 
held at Lyons, the bishop of Berytos dwelt on 
the miserable state of the Christians in the Holy Land, 
and it was resolved that another effort should be made 
for its deliverance. Honorius wrote to Henry III. of 
England to impress upon him the duty of taking the cross 
like his lion-hearted predecessor ; but Henry had in 
Simon of Montfort, earl of Leicester, a more pressing 
antagonist than Egyptian sultans or Korasmian savages. 
The pope found fuel more easily kindled in the heart of 
Louis IX., king of France. 



196 The Crusades. en. xni. 

This saint, the very type of royal monks and devotees, 
was ten years old when on the death of his father Louis 
ad. 1226. VIII. he succeeded to the throne. By his 
tin-of X " mother, Blanche of Castile, the regent of the 
France. kingdom, the child was brought up with a 

strictness to which he answered with unbounded docility. 
In his early youth the beauty of some fair maidens drew 
from him a glance expressive of some admiration : his 
mother told him that she would rather see him dead than 
that he should entertain even a sinful thought. His own 
will would have led him to assume the obligations of the 
cloister ; but the interests of the state demanded his mar- 
riage, and his wife, Margaret of Provence, passed with her 
husband under the rigid discipline of the queen-mother. 
His severity to himself grew with his years. At night 
he would rise from his bed and pace his chamber in the 
coldest season. A shift of the coarsest haircloth worn 
next to his skin furnished a desirable torture. Fruit he 
tasted only once in the year. On Fridays he never 
changed his dress, and never laughed. The iron chain 
scourges which he carried at his waist in an ivory case 
(.hew blood from his shoulders once every week of the 
year and thrice in every week during Lent. He would 
walk for miles to distant churches wearing shoes 
without soles. He would scarcely content himself with 
two, three, and even four masses a day ; and if he made a 
journey, his chaplain recited the offices on the road. Even 
monks tried to check an asceticism almost exceeding that 
which was demanded by the rules of Benedict, Dominic, or 
Francis ; the king asked whether he would have incurred 
the same rebuke had he spent twice as much time in 
hawking and dicing. No reproach, no sarcasm, no insult, 
could disturb the serenity of his humble soul. ' You are 
not a king of France/ exclaimed a woman who was 
pleading her cause before him ; ' you are a king only of 



The Eighth Crusade. 197 

priests and monks. It is a pity that you are king of 
France. You ought to be turned out.' ' You speak truly,' 
answered Louis. ' It has pleased God to make me king : 
it had been well had He chosen some one better able to 
govern this kingdom rightly.' The woman was sent away 
with a gift of money : and money was a thing on which 
the king set little store, and which he seldom needed except 
for the purchase of relics. Here his avarice was un- 
bounded ; and we have seen him paying the enormous 
sum of 10,000 silver marks for the 'genuine crown of 
thorns' preserved in the church of Sancta Sophia (p. 173). 
To such a man absolute obedience and implicit trust not 
only in God but in every article or proposition set forth 
as forming part of the Christian faith were the first, the 
most indispensable of all virtues. Not one point in all 
the theology of the Church was to be called into question ; 
there was not one which was not to be received as abso- 
lutely true. ' Do you know the name of your father?' he 
asked his seneschal, the lord of Joinville, who accompanied 
him to Palestine, and whose inimitable memoirs bring the 
man and his age before us in living reality. ' Yes,' 
answered the seneschal ; 'his name was Simon.' ' How 
do you know that ? ' again asked Louis. ' Because my 
mother has told me so many times.' ' Then,' answered 
the king, ' you ought perfectly to believe the articles of 
the faith which the apostles of our Lord have testified to 
you, as you have heard the Credo chanted every Sunday.' 
For questioning and argument his system had no place. 
Under no circumstances could there ever be need of any. 
He related to Joinville with hearty approval the conduct 
of a knight, who, during a disputation between some Jews 
and the monks of the abbey of Clugny, asked, leave of 
the abbot to say a few words. With some difficulty his 
request was granted. Raising himself on his crutches, 
the old warrior beckoned the rabbi to draw near, and 



198 The Crusades. ch.xiii. 

then put to him one question. ' Do you believe in the 
Virgin Mary, who bore our Saviour Jesus Christ, and that 
she was a virgin when she was the mother of God ?' The 
Jew answered promptly that he believed not one word of 
it. ' Fool that thou art,' replied the knight, 'for daring to 
enter a Christian monastery when thou disbelievest these 
things. For this madness thou shalt now pay.' Lifting 
up his crutch, he struck the man a blow on the ear which 
smote him to the ground. His comrades fled away from 
the scene of controversy, while the abbot came forward 
to reprove the knight for his folly. 'Thou art the greater 
fool,' was the retort, ' in permitting an assembly from 
which good Christians might by listening to their argu- 
ments have gone away unbelievers.' The king, Joinville 
tells us, clinched the moral of the story in the following- 
words : 'No one, however learned or perfect a theologian 
he may be, ought to dispute with Jews. The layman, 
whenever he hears the Christian faith impugned, should 
defend it with a sharp-edged sword which he should 
drive up to the hilt into the bodies of the unbelievers.' 

We cannot really know the history of an age, if we 
do not really know some at least of the men who lived in 
Louis IX., it ; and this fact gives in the case of Louis IX. 
l i t i 1 ] e 1 ^ e ^ n an importance to details which we might be 
peror. tempted to pass with a sigh, perhaps, or a 

smile. ' Do you wash the feet of the poor on Holy 
Thursday ? ' he asked the lord of Joinville. * Oh, fie ! ' 
was the answer ; ' no, never will I wash the feet of such 
fellows.' 'It is ill said, indeed,' answered the king, 'for 
you should never hold in disdain what God did for our 
instruction ; for He who is Lord and Master of the 
universe did on that day, Holy Thursday, wash the feet 
of all his apostles, telling them that He who was their 
Master had thus done, that they in like manner might do 
the same to each other. I therefore beg of you, out of 



The Eighth Crusade. 199 

love to Him first and then from regard to me, that you 
will accustom yourself to do so.' Another sermon, the 
gentleness of which makes us forget its tedious prosing, 
rebuked Joinville's impetuosity in saying that he would 
rather have committed thirty deadly sins than be a leper. 
Louis was, in short, a man who would have loved all 
men, had he not been taught to believe that unbelief, 
heresy, or even doubt (honest doubt was for him, of 
course, a thing inconceivable), put the unbeliever or 
doubter beyond the pale of Christian charity. For Jews, 
then, or infidels he avowed the most burning hatred, 
although probably this hatred would have vanished like 
morning mist before the sight of Jew or infidel in dire 
distress or agony. But in spite of his bigotry and 
narrowness, his stern asceticism, his incessant ser- 
monising, there was in him a depth of sweetness and 
gentleness, a genuine goodness of heart and life, which 
won for him the love of thousands who made little 
attempt to follow his example. In an age infamous for 
its foulness of speech and the profanity of its oaths the 
purity of his language was never tarnished. In his 
quaint phrases Joinville says of him, ' I never heard him, 
at any time, utter an indecent word nor make use of the 
devil's name, which is now very commonly uttered by 
every one — a practice which, I firmly believe, far from 
being agreeable to God, is highly displeasing to Him.' 
Nay, more, these qualities were in him combined with a 
sound sense and a firmness of will which made him in 
all cases of right and duty hard as adamant, and effec- 
tually crushed the contempt which some might have 
been tempted to feel for his superstitions. He could 
bear rebuke patiently : but they who thought that they 
might take advantage of his devotion to encroach on his 
rights as king or even on the rights of his neighbours 
found themselves speedily undeceived. When Gregory IX., 



200 The Crusades. en. xm. 

after his second and final rupture with Frederick II.. de- 
posed him from his imperial throne and offered 

A D 12^0 

the dignity to Louis's brother Robert, the 
meek and gentle king replied to the pope in the following 
words : — ' Whence is this pride and daring of the pope, 
which thus disinherits a king who has no superior, nor 
even an equal, among Christians, — a king not convicted 
of the crimes laid to his charge ? Even if these crimes 
were proved, no power could depose him but that of a 
general council. On his transgressions the judgement of 
his enemies is of no weight, and his deadliest enemy is 
the pope. To us he has not only thus far appeared 
guiltless, he has been a good neighbour : we see no cause 
for suspicion either of his worldly loyalty or of his 
Catholic faith. This we know, that he has fought valiantly 
for our Lord Jesus Christ both by sea and land. So 
much religion we have not found in the pope, who 
endeavoured to confound and wickedly supplant him in 
his absence, while he was engaged in the cause of God.' 

In this cause, as interpreted by the religion of the 
time, this guileless but stout-hearted champion of justice 
a.d. 1245. and right was now to peril limb and life 
trS^Tvo" without a shade of fear and with as complete 
by Louis IX. a lack of every quality needed in a general 
and leader of armies. A more thorough contrast to 
Frederick whom he thus valiantly defended it would be 
impossible to imagine. To him the learning, the grace, 
the refinement of heathen philosophers and poets, the 
music and the songs of all poets of all ages, were beyond 
expression horrible. Of an intercommunion of nations 
founded on commerce, learning, and art, he could have 
not the faintest notion. To the best of his power he 
would administer justice in his own land so long as he 
remained in it ; when his duty as a champion of the 
cross called him elsewhere, he would leave it with fifty 



1 239- 1 249. The Eighth Crusade, 201 

thousand men in his train, having formed no military 
plans, but under a profound conviction that God whom 
he sought to serve would fight his battles, and that, if it 
should not be so, the result would be due only to his own 
sins and sinfulness. To the remonstrances of his mother, 
who sought to dissuade him from the enterprise, his ear 
was utterly deaf. He was seized with illness : life seemed 
to be gone; an attendant, thinking that it a. d. 1244. 
had gone, drew a covering over his face. Dec - 10 - 
It was withdrawn by another, and the king was heard 
to say, ' God has raised me from the dead : give me the 
cross.' The die was cast. Nine months later, he assumed 
the badge publicly in the parliament of Paris ; and at 
Christmas in the same year he distributed to his courtiers 
his usual gift of a new robe to each. By his orders a 
red cross had been embroidered on these garments 
between the shoulders, and the nobles owned themselves 
fairly entrapped. They must accompany the king. 

Two years more were spent in preparations. On the 
1 2th of June 1248 Louis received from the papal legate 
at the abbey of St. Denis his purse and Departure of 
pilgrim's staff with the Oriflamme or sacred Louis from 
banner of the saint. At the end of August 
he sailed from France. Eight months were spent in 
Cyprus, where his people were fed in great part by the 
emperor Frederick. The kindness called forth a warm 
letter to the pope, pleading for the absolution of a man who 
had thus befriended the soldiers of the cross. His letter 
was treated with contempt. In the spring of 

1 -i i \ r t- 1 A - D - I2 49- 

the next year he sailed for Egypt ; and as 
soon as his fleet was off Damietta, his envoys hastened 
to the sultan with alarming pictures of their master's 
power, and with a summons for immediate submission. 
The sultan replied that his cause was just ; that those 
who made war without just cause should perish ; and 



202 The Crusades. 



CM. XIII. 



that mighty armaments had often been destroyed by a 
handful of soldiers. 

The campaign began with a signal success. The 
garrison of Damietta, struck with something like panic 
Capture of fear, fled at the sight of the fifty thousand 
Damietta. crusaders landing in the pomp of military 
parade. The place was taken ; but the people had 
hurried away to Cairo, having first set fire to 
that quarter of the city in which they had 
stored their merchandise and their most valuable pro- 
perty. This victory had its usual result on the crusaders. 
The tenor of Louis's saintly life was unbroken ; but 
within a stone's throw of his tent his people were in- 
dulging in unbounded debauchery. 

Later in the season an addition to their force was 
made by 200 English knights under William Longsword 
March of the (P- J 9-0 now bishop of Salisbury; and in 
army to- November the army began its march towards 

wards Cairo. _ . _/ . 

Cairo. Their progress, never easy, owing to 
the assaults of the enemy, was effectually checked at the 
canal of Ashmoun. The causeways which they attempted 
to construct were destroyed, and their machines burnt 
with Greek fire. At length a Bedoween, for a large 
bribe, showed them a ford. The passage was effected, 
and the enemy fled before them on the other side. With 
good order and discipline the crusaders might now have 
achieved some solid success. But the count of Artois, 
brother of the king, could not wait to be joined by the 
main army. He must press on at once against the fugi- 
tives. In vain the grand-master of the Templars re- 
minded him of the folly of trusting to a feeling of passing 
fear. The count deliberately imputed his advice to 
systematic treachery. ' Do you suppose,' replied the 
Templar with calm dignity, ' that we have left our homes 
and our substance, and taken the religious habit in a 



1249- The Eighth Crusade. 203 

strange land, only to betray the cause of God and to 
forfeit our salvation?' The bishop of Salisbury offered 
his mediation : it was rejected with a biting insult. In 
thorough disorder the crusaders rushed into Mansourah ; 
and seeing their condition at a glance the Mamelukes 
rushed upon their prey. A sufficient force was sent to 
cut off all communication between the men with the 
count of Artois and the main army under the king. 
Boiling water, stones, blazing wood, were Tota i defeat 
hurled upon them from the houses. The of the forces 
count of Artois was killed before he could coumof 6 
see the full effects of his folly ; and his death Artols - 
was soon followed by that of William Longsword. The 
utter destruction of his force was prevented only by 
succour from the king who, feeble though he may have 
been as a general, showed in the hour of danger a daunt- 
less and unselfish bravery. Both sides had suffered 
fearfully ; but the king was cut off from Damietta, 
and sickness of a singularly malignant kind began to 
waste his camp. Louis offered the enemy a treaty 
based on the exchange of Damietta for the lordship of 
Jerusalem. The negotiation failed, and retreat became 
inevitable ; but at the river and before the canal they had 
to fight at desperate disadvantage. The A .r>. i25 o. 
courage of the king was unbroken : but his Seenm*. 
strength was gone. He sank down in a soner - 
state of exhaustion after exertions worthy of the English 
Richard, and awoke to find himself a prisoner. Some 
there were, says Joinville, to whom the idea of retreat 
was intolerable ; and the thought of the age is vividly 
marked in the story which tells us how James du Chastel, 
bishop of Soissons, preferred to live with God to return- 
ing to the land of his birth, how he made a charge on 
the Turks, as if he alone meant to fight their whole 
army, and how they soon sent him to God and placed 



204 The Crusades. cn.xin. 

him in the company of martyrs by forthwith cutting him 
down. 

The crusade seemed to be closing in hopeless disaster. 
The queen at Damietta was about to become a mother, 
when she heard the tidings of her husband's captivity. A 
premature birth followed. She called her babe Tristan, 
the child of sorrow. Louis himself had to undergo greater 
misery. Of 10,000 Christian prisoners in Mansourah 
those only who embraced the faith of Islam were allowed 
to live. Some recanted, and Louis had the bitterness of 
witnessing their apostasy : the vast majority stood firm, 

Firmness of ano - ne h ac * tne a g on >' °f seeing them die. 
the Icing. But at no time was he known to exhibit a 

more unclouded trust in God, a more cool bravery towards 
his enemy. Peace was offered to him if he would sur- 
render all the Christian fortresses in Syria. He answered 
that they were not his to surrender, and that he could not 
dispose of that which belonged to Frederick II. as king 
of Jerusalem. He was threatened with torture to his 
Terms of limbs, with the degradation of being carried 

ransom. from city to city and exposed for the gratifi- 

cation of sightseers. He replied quietly, 'I am your 
prisoner. You may do with me as you will.' At last it 
was arranged that Damietta should be given up, that the 
king should pay one million byzants for his own ransom, 
and half a million French livres for his barons. He de- 
murred to the amount for himself, but agreed at once to 
the other. ' The king of France,' he said, ' must not 
haggle about the freedom of his subjects.' Not to be out- 
done by his unselfishness, the sultan Turan Shah struck 
off one fifth from his ransom. 

Murder of * l W2LS anTlost tne ^ ast act of tne Sultan's 

Turan Shah. life. His murder heightened the dangers of 
the Christian captives ; the firmness of Louis in refusing 
to take an oath couched in what he pronounced to be 



1250. The Eighth Crusade. 205 

blasphemous language increased them still more. The 
difficulty was at length got over; and after enduring suffer- 
ings for which the Saracens said (if we may be- Release of 
lieve Joinville) that if they had had to undergo Louis IX - 
them they would have renounced Mahomed, the king was 
free. 

Still Louis, with the bare relics of his army, could not 
bring himself to return home. He had written again and 
again to urge on Henry of England the duty . 

of coming himself with instant and effectual ofLouis'to 
succour ; he could not think that Henry would Naz:ireth - 
disregard his entreaties, especially when these were backed 
by offers of the surrender of Normandy. He still fan- 
cied that the Vicar of Christ himself, having made up his 
long quarrel with Frederick, would hasten to join his 
faithful children and lead them in a supreme effort which 
could not fail of success. He was abandoned by his 
brothers the counts of Anjou and Poitou ; but with his 
faithful seneschal he made a pilgrimage in sackcloth to 
Nazareth. The sight of the Holy Sepulchre, the dearest 
longing of his heart, he firmly denied himself. The per- 
mission to visit it was freely offered by the sultan of Da- 
mascus : but Louis would not leave behind for future so- 
vereigns a precedent by which they might reap the fruits 
of an enterprise in which they had failed. He returned 
to Europe like Richard of England, humbled but not 
dishonoured ; — rather, to speak more strictly, having won 
that serene renown which was soon to place his name in 
the long catalogue of the saints. 



206 The Crusades. ch.xiv. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

THE NINTH CRUSADE. 

Throughout the history of the crusades the wisdom 
of the general or the statesman is conspicuous by its 
Comparison absence ; and we may fairly compare the 
°^ h ^ t e e a r rher long series of these wild enterprises with the 
crusades. erratic course and fitful splendour of a comet 

which at the moment of its greatest brilliancy rushes off 
into an ocean of darkness. They carried with them, as 
we have seen (p. 107), not one of the elements of perma- 
nent success, while they lasted long enough to impoverish 
myriads and carry misery and grief to the homes of mil- 
lions. But the qualities which had won for the earlier 
crusaders whatever renown they may have acquired, were 
exhibited in full measure to the end. Their absolute 
fearlessness, their firm persistence in the faith which 
alone they could allow to be true, their heroic endurance 
of the suffering which in hours of triumph they sel- 
dom hesitated to inflict on others, are beyond question ; 
but all these are virtues which apart from the sagacity of 
the wise ruler may be brilliant but must be eminently 
useless. 

This wisdom the Latin Christians of Palestine were 
destined never to learn. Disunion ran perpetually into 
quarrels, — quarrel sometimes into open warfare. Between 
the Venetians and the men of Pisa and Genoa there was 
at best but a hollow truce. The side which the Templars 

might take in a dispute was not that which 
Battle be- would be taken by the Hospitallers or the Teu- 
Templars tonic knights ; and the schism of the two former 
and Hospi- of these orders led in 1259 to a pitched battle 

from which scarcely a Templar escaped alive. 
From slaughtering each other the champions of the cross 



1259-1265. The Ninth Crusade. 207 

passed to the slaughterhouses of Saracen executioners. 
The savage warriors of the Mameluke sultan Bibars seized 
Nazareth and Acre, torturing to death those who had not 
been happy enough to fall on the battle-field. Ninety 
Hospitallers held the fortress of Azotus : the A .n. 1263. 
last of them died when at length their enemies [, nvasi . on of 
stormed the walls. The castle of Saphouri theiiime^ 



hike sultan 
lobars. 



was surrendered by the Templars on the con- 
dition that the garrison, numbering 600 men in all, should 
be safely conveyed to the next Christian town. The sultan 
flung the treaty to the winds, and gave them a few hours 
to make their choice between death and apostasy. The 
prior and two Franciscan monks besought their compa- 
nions to stand fast in their faith ; and when the sultan 
demanded their answer, not a man shrunk from the penalty 
of refusal. All were slaughtered, the prior with the two 
monks being flayed alive. 

At length the tidings reached Europe that Bohemond 
VI. had been driven from Antioch and that his city had 
passed into the hands of the unbelievers. The 
saintly Louis still yearned for the rescue of Amfo?h. 
the holy places ; but the memory of his past disasters led 
him to fear that his sinfulness or his bad ge- 
neralship might again bring disgrace on the Aa I268 - 
Christian arms. His diffidence called forth the encourage 
ment of pope Clement IV., who with greater importunity 
urged Henry III. of England to do his duty by taking the 
cross. Three years had passed since the' fatal defetat of 
Simon of Montfort, earl of Leicester, at Eve- 
sham : but the country, although not in actual A-D " I265 " 
war, was by no means in a state of repose, and we might 
wonder why at such a time the prince who was afterwards 
to reign as Edward I. should pledge himself to the new 
crusade, were it not clear that the enterprise was one 
which might be used for the purpose of drawing away 



208 The Crusades. ch. xiv. 

from England men who might be troublesome or dange- 
rous to his father or to himself. Edward took good care 
that the earl of Gloucester whom he feared the most 
should share his perils, if not his glory, in the East. 

With sixty thousand men, Louis IX., accompanied by 
the counts of Flanders, Brittany, Champagne, and other 
barons, left France to return to it no more. A 
?ade of storm drove the fleet to Sardinia ; and there 

Louis IX. j t was decked t h at t he crusaders should in 
the first instance go to Tunis. Charles of Anjou, the so- 
vereign of Sicily, was anxious to maintain the 
rights of Christendom by exacting a tribute 
paid formerly to his predecessors : the devout Louis re- 
membered, it is said, the messages by which the king 
of Tunis had expressed his wish to embrace Christianity, 
and thought that the presence of a large army would 
give him courage to make open confession of the true 
faith. The army landed and had encamped, we are 
told, on the site of Carthage, when a plague broke out, 
and amongst its crowd of victims struck the king. His 
whole life had been a prayer : it remained to the last 
a prayer for others rather than for himself. With serene 
Death of the submission to the divine counsels he stretched 
king- himself on his couch of ashes, and as he 

uttered the words, ' I will enter Thy house, O Lord, I 
will worship in Thy sanctuary,' he died. 

When the English Edward at last arrived in the camp, 
he saw that the idea of reaching Palestine before the 
winter was impracticable, and made up his mind to return 
to Sicily until the spring. When at length he reached 
a.d. 1271. Acre, he found that his name carried with 
NaSrShby it much of the terror associated with that 
Edward son f Richard Plantagenet. The Christians has- 

ofHenrvIII. & 

of England. tened to his standard, and with 7,000 men he 
attacked and took Nazareth, slaying the people with 



1270-1274- The Ninth Crusade. 209 

a massacre as pitiless as any which had sullied the 

chronicles of the crusades. It was his first and his last 

victory in Palestine. His campaign was cut short by 

sickness, and the dagger of an assassin sent by the emir 

of Joppa as a bearer of letters touching his conversion 

to Christianity well nigh cut short his life. Edward hurled 

the murderer to the floor and stabbed him to the heart. 

But the dagger was undoubtedly poisoned ; and it needed 

more than ordinary skill on the part of the surgeons to 

arrest the progress of the venom. The sides of the wound 

were carefully pared away; and the strength of youth with 

the tender nursing of his wife Eleanor did the rest. The 

romancers of a later age framed the talc that he must 

have died, had she not with her lips sucked the poison 

from the wound. 

It was clear that nothing more could be done in the 

Holy Land, and Edward knew not how soon his presence 

might become indispensable in England. A A .„. i272 . 

peace was made for ten years, and the English £ eturn , of 
r J ' ° Edward to 

crusaders set out on their homeward voyage. Europe. 

For a long series of years Europe had been making vigorous 

efforts, and the results of these efforts had been nothing 

more substantial or permanent than the lines left on the sea 

sand by an ebbing tide. For one moment it seemed that 

the spirit of the dream might be changed, when Theobald, 

archdeacon of Liege, the friend of the English Edward, 

was summoned from Acre to fill the chair of St. Peter as 

Gregory X. Theobald had been an eye- Vain efforts 

witness of the desperate calamities which were ° f(;r cgoryX. 

1 to stir up a 

crushing the Latins of Palestine, and he called crusade. 
the princes of Europe to the rescue with a zeal worthy of 
Innocent III. or of Urban II. A council held 
at Lyons decreed a new crusade. Rodolph A "°" I274 ' 
of Hapsburg, not yet firm in his imperial dignity, pledged 
himself to join it ; and his example was followed by 

P 



io The Crusades. 



CII. XIV 



Michael Palcologos who thirteen years earlier (1287) na <A 
put down the Latin dynasty in Constanti- 
nople. But Gregory died in less than two 
years after the assembly at Lyons, and his visions of re- 
newed conquests in Palestine died with him. 

In the Holy Land itself the miserable Christian rem- 
nant adhered to its old tradition of fighting about 
Claims to the shadows when the substance had been already 
titular king- } ost Hugh III. of Cvprus had had himself 

dom of Jeru- , _ . r _,. 

salem. crowned at Tyre as king of Jerusalem. The 

Templars urged the claims of Charles of Anjou ; the Hos- 
pitallers insisted with more sense that the dispute might be 
postponed until they had recovered the kingdom the title 
to which they were debating. A few years later, when 
Henry II. of Cyprus held this shadowy 
dignity, the grand-master of the Templars 
pleaded before Nicholas IV. the wrongs of the Latins 
which could be avenged only by the blood of the Sa- 
racens. But the power of the ancient spell was broken. 
Nicholas was ready to furnish some men, but these were 
ruffians and criminals, the very offscourings of the people: 
money he obstinately refused to give. The grand-master 
was not more successful elsewhere ; and the Italian rob- 
bers formed the whole force with which he returned to 
Palestine. 

The last forlorn struggle was made at Acre. Here, as 

elsewhere, the valour of the Templars shone conspicuous. 

The grand-master rejected the bribes of the 

sultan ; but the latter cared little whether he 

could work on the venality of his enemies or whether he 

could not. His Mamelukes were not less courageous 

than the Templars, and their numbers were 

overwhelming. The assault began : the titular 

king of Jerusalem, Henry II. of Cyprus, besought the 

Teutonic knights to occupy his post, promising to return 



1 276-1 29 1. The Sequel of the Religious Wars. 211 

the next morning. His request was granted : but before 
the morning came, Henry was on his way to Cyprus. The 
attack was renewed with greater fury ; but the Christians 
had lost all heart. The master of the Templars had been 
killed by a poisoned arrow, and seven Knights Hospitallers 
sailed away, the last remnant of the magnificent order 
which had braved successfully a thousand dangers. The 
city was lost : but the horrors of the siege were not ended. 
The people had hurried to the shore ; a storm prevented 
them from embarking ; and the very sea was reddened by 
the blood of the last victims of a wild and fanatical su- 
perstition. 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE SEQUEL OF THE RELIGIOUS WARS. 

THE crusades had come to an end. The embers smouldered 
on : but it was to the last degree unlikely that they would 
be rekindled. The great military orders with- Gradual dc- 
drew to seek a field for their energies elsewhere ; cay and 
the Teutonic knights to the dreary regions of thecrusa- ° 
Lithuaniaand Poland,— the knights of the Hos- ding - spirit - 
pital first to Cyprus, then to Rhodes where, after many a 
hard fight with Greeks and Saracens, they achieved the 
conquest of the whole island and settled down to repose in 
their earthly paradise. The dream of returning to Palestine 
still haunted the mind of Edward I., who by his will left 
30,000/. for the equipment and maintenance of the knights 
who were to bear his heart to the Holy Land ; but pro- 
bably the last reflection of the old fire is seen in the words 
by which Henry V. in his dying moments asserted the 
bounden duty of princes to build the walls of Jerusalem 
and declared that, had he been spared for a longer life, or 



212 The Crusades. 



CH. XV. 



had he lived in quieter times, he would have undertaken 
this task of restoration. Even now perhaps the task was 
one of no insuperable difficulty. Its practicability had 
been shown more than once by its accomplishment ; but 
it was one which must be taken in hand in the spirit of 
that wise and tolerant statesmanship which seeks to 
further the interests of the subject population and to make 
one people of the conquerors and the conquered. This 
idea was, as we have seen, deliberately rejected by the first 
crusaders, and, with the single exception of the emperor 
Henry at Constantinople (p. 170), by all who followed them. 
There is no reason to suppose that the English Henry V. 
would have been animated by a wiser spirit and a larger 
charity than the companions of Godfrey and Tancred. 

The soil of Palestine had been watered abundantly 
with the blood both of Christians and of infidels. The 
Persecution soil of Euro P e > chiefly that of France, was 
and suppres- to drink the blood of that haughty but valiant 
Kn'igius 10 order which had done as much to destroy as 
Templars. t0 ma j n t a in the hold of Latin Christendom 
on Palestine. Among all the monstrous iniquities which 
perjured kings and godless statesmen have ever perpe- 
trated, the lies and cruelties, the persistent and diabolical 
injustice which attended the suppression of the Knights 
Templars must hold very nearly the first place. These 
men may have, nay undoubtedly they had, committed 
enormous crimes themselves : but these were crimes done 
in the sight of the sun and shared by all crusaders of 
every generation, the saintly Louis of France forming, it 
would seem, the solitary exception. Now, when their 
services were no longer needed or could no more be of 
use in Palestine, the benefits to be derived from a con- 
fiscation of their properties became patent to 
Philip the Fair, the brutal tyrant, the pro- 
fligate murderer, the unscrupulous thief, who bullied the 



1309. The Sequel of the Religious Wars. 213 

pope, Clement V., into a recognition of charges which at 
first he had rightly cast aside as absurd, extravagant, and 
impossible. False witness, tortures, hunger, thirst, dark- 
ness, filth, and disease in sunless dungeons, were all 
used with consummate skill and pertinacity to subdue the 
warriors who in the field had never quailed. Taken one 
by one, some made confessions which were drawn from 
them by excruciating agonies, and which, when these 
agonies ceased, were indignantly withdrawn. With his 
remaining comrades the last grand-master 

11 11 • i • r i • A - D - x 3 r 4- 

died, solemnly asserting the innocence of his 
order — an innocence unquestionably real, if we confine 
ourselves to the charges brought against them by Philip 
and his myrmidons ; and the kings of France, made 
wealthier by their iniquities, laid up another count for 
the great indictment to be brought against their luckless 
representative in the French revolution. In England the 
proceedings against the Templars, shameful though they 
were, fell infinitely short of the disgrace which covered 
the king and the judges of France : but in both countries 
it was seen what might be done by malignant lies uttered 
boldly under the plea of maintaining the truth and the 
righteousness of God. 

In this process we see, in fact, the legitimate result 
of the crusades. The unbelief of the Saracen was a 
sufficient reason for wresting from him a A D I2o8 _ 
country which was regarded as the inalienable ^ Albi . 
heritage of Christendom : the alleged unbelief gensian cru- 
or profanity of Templars was a sufficient reason 
for hounding on judges to their destruction ; and the 
heresies truly or falsely alleged against any persons what- 
soever would be a thorough warrant for carrying fire and 
sword through their land, if gentler means failed to extort 
submission. The lesson had been soon learnt ; and while 
Dandolo and Baldwin were laying the foundations of the 



214 The Crusades. 



(II. XV. 



short-lived Latin empire at Constantinople, Innocent 
was preaching a crusade against the peaceable, although 
perhaps not strictly orthodox, subjects of count Raymond 
of Toulouse. The attempt to put down error by force 
was producing its natural fruits ; and men like Bernard 
and Innocent were brought to consider every means 
lawful, every weapon hallowed, against the wretched 
enemies of Christ and of his Church. Horrible mis- 
creants, like the inquisitors Fulk of Marseilles and 
Arnold of Amaury, could without a pang of remorse 
involve in one common slaughter the aged and the young, 
the mother and the infant ; and Simon of Montfort, cased 
in the triple armour of a heart harder than the nether 
millstone, could exult with savage joy over the massacres 
of his sword and the torments of the Inquisition. In 
this awful chaos Frederick II., the enemy of the pope, 
the friend of Saracenic philosophers, of Moslem women, 
joined furiously in the fray. Near in its ideal, and 
similar in some points of its developement, as was the 
careless society of the troubadour to his own luxurious 
civilisation in Sicily, yet not a sign is there to show that 
he regarded with the least emotion its rapid and terrible 
catastrophe. His appreciation of their (jay Science, 
of their art, their refinement, and their luxury, was 
chilled and quenched by the thought of the vile crowd of 
Pctrobrussians and other vulgar heretics, by whom these 
careless voluptuaries were surrounded. Well may it be 
said that never in any history were the principles of 
justice, the faith of treaties, common humanity so trampled 
under foot as in the Albigensian crusade. i Slay on ; God 
will know his own/ was the cry of the papal legate before 
the walls of Beziers ; and this easy method of settling 
a long controversy was the moral logically drawn from 
the preaching of the hermit Peter and of Bernard of 
Clairvaux. 



1 2 12. The Sequel of the Religious Wars. 215 

It is possible that the historian who seeks to account 
for all the characteristics which mark the era of the cru- 
sades may connect these expeditions with The Child . 
some events which should be traced to other ren's cm- 

_,, . ..... sades. 

causes. The impulses which bring vast 
crowds together for any purpose are always more or less 
contagious ; and the middle ages exhibit, throughout, a 
series of enthusiastic risings. The outbreak of the 
Pastoureaux, or Shepherds (so called from their supposed 
simplicity), which for a time led astray even Blanche of 
Castile (p. 196), took place, perhaps only by an accidental 
coincidence, while Louis IX. was a captive in Egypt : but 
it was only one of a thousand instances of what has well 
been termed superstition set in motion. To this class 
belong probably the expeditions known as the Children's 
crusades, although these were started with the idea of 
recovering the Holy Cross from the infidel. A few words 
may suffice to tell the miserable story how in 
France under the boy Stephen 30,000 children 
encamped around Vendome ; how 10,000 were lost or had 
strayed away before they reached Marseilles a month later ; 
how there they waited under a conviction that the waters 
of the Mediterranean would be cloven asunder to give 
them a passage on dry land ; how at length two mer- 
chants offered 'for the cause of God and without charge' 
to convey them in ships to Palestine; and how the 5,000 
children, who sailed from the harbour chanting the hymn 
Vent Creator Sp/ri/us, found themselves at the end of 
their voyage in the slave markets of Alexandria and 
Algiers. A pendant to this woful tale is found in the 
sufferings of the 20,000 German boys and girls who set 
out in the same year from Cologne under the peasant lad 
Nicholas 20,000 strong, and of whom 5,000 only reached 
Genoa. Of the rest some had returned home : some 
marched to Brindisi, and, setting sail for Palestine, were 



2i6 The Crusades. ch. xv. 

never heard of more. The fortune of those who found 
their way to Genoa was more happy. Invited to settle 
there by the senate, many became wealthy, and not a 
few, rising to distinction, founded some of the noblest 
families in the state. 

But as the motives which led to the crusades were 
complex, so their results were complex also. The picture 
Indirect re- m ust not be presented only in its darker 
suits of the aspects. We have seen the effect which they 

crusades. , ... _ 

produced on the growth of the temporal 
power of the popes. We must not forget that by rolling 
back the tide of Mahomedan conquest from Constanti- 
nople for upwards of four centuries they probably saved 
Europe from horrors the recital of which might even now 
make our ears tingle ; that by weakening the resources 
and the power of the barons they strengthened the 
authority of the kings acting in alliance with the citizens 
of the great towns ; that this alliance broke up the feudal 
system, gradually abolished serfdom, and substituted the 
authority of a common law for the arbitrary will of chiefs 
who for real or supposed affronts rushed to the arbitra- 
ment of private w T ar. Worthless in themselves, and 
wholly useless as means for founding any permanent 
dominion in Palestine or elsewhere, these enterprises 
have affected the commonwealths of Europe in ways of 
which the promoters never dreamed. They left a wider 
gulf between the Greek and the Latin churches, between 
the subjects of the Eastern empire and the nations of 
Western Europe ; but by the mere fact of throwing East 
and West together they led gradually to that interchange 
of thought and that awakening of the human intellect to 
which we owe all that distinguishes our modern civilisa- 
tion from the religious and political systems of the middle 
ages. \ 



INDEX. 



ABB 
A BEASSIDE caliphs of Bagdad, I 
■**■ 14 

Abelard, 85 

Abubekr, 12 

Acre, siege of, 122 ; surrender of, 1 27 

Adela, daughter of William the Con- 
queror, 78 

Adelais, 116 

Adhemar, bishop of Puy, 43, 56, 66, 68 

Albigensians, crusades against the, 213 

Alexander II., pope, 2, 20 

Alexandria, surrender of, to Almeric.,97 

Alcxios, brother of Isaac Angel u», 148, 
T 53 

Alexios, emperor of the East, 17, 23, 
49 ; extorts the homage of the cru- 
saders, 50 ; his conduct to the cru- 
saders, 52 ; fails to aid them, 64 ; 
benefited by the crusaders, 79 ; 
death of, 81 

Alexios, son of Isaac Angelus, 148, 
150, 156 

Alexios Strategopoulos, 174 

Alfonso, king of Gallicia, 37 

Almeric, king of Jerusalem, 95 

Almeric of Lusigaan, king of Cyprus 
and titular king of Jerusalem, 139, 
177 

Amalfi, merchants of, 18 

Andrew, king of Hungary, 170, 179 

Anna Comnena, 48, 52 

Antioch, siege of, 58 ; betrayed to Bo- 
hemond, 62 ; fall of, 66 

Arnold, chaplain of Bohemond, 65, 71 

Arnold of Amaury, 214 

Arthur of Brittany, 124 

Artois, count of, 202, 203 

Ascalon, battle of, 74 ; fall of, 94 

Assize of Jerusalem, 76, 164 

Augustine, St., 8 

Austria, Leopold, duke of, 129 

Azan the Bulgarian, 173 

Azotus, battle of, 128 

■DAGHASIAN, 58, 61, 63 

■^ Baldwin I., brother of Godfrey . 

of Bouillon, 42, 57 
Baldwin II., emperor of the East, 173 | 
Baldwin II., king of Jerusalem, 81 I 



CON 
Baldwin III., king of Jerusalem, 82 
Baldwin IV., king of Jerusalem, 100 
Baldwin V., king of Jerusalem, 101 
Baldwin du Bourg, 81 
Baldwin, lord of Edessa, 57 ; king of 

Jerusalem, 77, 81 
Baldwin of Flanders, emperor of the 

East, 158, 168 
Baldwin of Hainault, 68 
Barbarossa [Frederick I.] 
Bela, king of Hungary, 115 
Berengaria, 125, 126 
Bernard, patriarch of Antioch, 67 
Bernard, St., 83 et set/. 
Bertram! of Toulouse, 78 
Blanche of Castile, 197, 215 
Blondel, 134 
Bodin, 51 
Bohemond, son of Robert Guiscard, 

22, 43, 50, 78 
Boniface, marquis of Montferrat, 146, 

166, 169 
Bouvines, battle of, 1S3 
Brienne, constable of Apulia, 23 
Brienne, John of, 177, 192 
Bulgarians, 167 

r*ALO JOHN, 167, 169 

^ Charles of Anjou, 208 

Charles the Great, 20 

Chivalry, cause and effect of, 44 

Chosroes [Khosru] 

Christianity, the, of the first century, 
3 ; influence of paganism upon, 5 ; 
modified by the Roman imperial 
tradition, 19 

Cid, the, 37 

Clement IV., pope, 207 

Clement V., pope, 213 

Cogni [Iconium] 

Conrad, bishop of Hildesheim, 137 

Conrad, emperor of Germany, 87, 90, 
141 

Conrad of Tyre, 106, 123, 129 

Constantia, heiress of Sicily, 121, 124 

Constantine, church of, at Jerusalem, 7 

Constantinople, first siege of by the 
Latins, 154 ; second siege and con- 
quest of, 156 ; Latin emperors of, 



2l8 



Index. 



COR 
163; — Baldwin I., 158, 16S ; Henry, 
brother of Baldwin, 169 ; Peter of 
Courtenay, 170; Robert, 172; John 
of Brienne, 172 ; Baldwin II., 173 : 
— Latin empire of, 165 ; recovery of 
by the Greeks, 174 

Coradin, sultan of Syria, 180 

Council of Clermont, 28 

Council of Lyons, 209 

Council of Nice, 17 

Council of Piacenza, 23 

Councils of Lateran, 113, 179 

Courtenay, Joceline of, 81, 94 

Courtenay, Peter of, 170, 171 

Courtesy, 47 

Courts of Love, 92 

Cross, discovery of the true, 7 ; recovery 
of, 12 

Crusaders, numbers of the, 55 ; fero- 
city of the, 73 

Crusades, causes tending to, 1 ct seq. ; 
financial effects of, 33 ; effects of, 
on the power of the pope and the 
clergy, 33 ; on the feudal system, 
34 ; not national enterprises, 36 ; 
against the Albigensians, 213; the 
Children's, 215 ; indirect results of 
the, 216 

T~)AIMBERT, patriarch of Jeru- 

J -^ salem, 75 

Damascus, siege of, 91 

Damietta, 112, 180, 202 

Dandolo, Henry, doge of Venice, 160, 

166, 168 
Dargham, 95 
David [Kilidje Arslan] 
Demetrius, lord of Thessalonica, 171 
Dorylaion, battle of, 56 
Durazzo, 22, 79, 167 

T^DESSA, conquest of, by Baldwin, 

-^ 57 ; by Zenghis, 82 

Edward I., of England, 207, 208, 209, 
211 

Eleanor of Poitou, wife of Louis VII., 
86, 89, 91 ; marries Henry of Nor- 
mandy, afterwards Henry II. of 
England, 92 ; writes to Cadestine 
HI., 134. 

Eleanor, wife of Edward I., 209 

Emico, count of Leiningen, 39 

Engelbert of Tournay, 71 

Eugenius III., pope, 86 

Eustace, count of Boulogne, 42 

"pATIMITE sultans of Egypt, 14, 

60, 95, 96, 99 
Ferentino, treaty of, 184 



ING 

J Frederick I., Barbarossa, 120, 121 
Frederick II., grandson of Barba- 

rossa, 1S1 ct seq., 200, 214 
j Fulk of Anjou, king of Jerusalem, 

82, 113 
I Fulk of Marseilles, 214 
j Fulk of Neuilly, 143 

I fENGHIS KHAN, 194 
! ^-* Geoffrey, archbishop of York, 117 
I ( leoffrey of Villehardouin, 145, 167, 169 
! Ceroid, patriarch of Jerusalem, 191 
I Godfrey of Bouillon, 42, 47, 61, 72"; 
baron and defender of the Holy Se- 
pulchre, 74 ; reign and death of, 75 
I Gottschalk, the monk, 39 
Greeks and Latins, antagonism be- 
tween, 54, 163. 175 
Gregory 1., the Great, 9, 20 
Gregory VII., pope [Hildebrand] 
Gregory VIII., pope, 114 
Gregory IX., pope, 185, 19 

ry X., pope, 209 
Guelf, duke of Bavaria, 37 
( iuibert, abbot, 32 
Guido, abbot of Vaux Cemay, 159 
Guiscard, Robert, 22 
Guy of Lusignan, king of Jerusalem, 
101 ; of Cyprus, 130 

TTAKEM, 14 

- 1 * Haroun-al-Reschid, 24 

Helena, church of, at Bethlehem, 7 
Henry II., king of Cyprus, 210 
Henry II. of England, 113, 115, 116,117 
Henry IV., emperor, 24, 41 
Henry V. of England, 211 
I Henry VI., emperor, 132, 135, 136, 137 
j Henry, Latin emperor of the 

169, 170, 211 
j Henry of Champagne, titular king of 

Jerusalem, 130 
I Heraclius, emperor of the East, 11, 12 
j Heraclius, patriarch of Jerusalem, 113 

Herakleios fHeraclius] 
1 Herman of Sal/a, 122, 188, 190 
! Hildebrand [Gregory VII.], 2, loetseq. 
1 Hohenstaufen, house of, 182 
; Holy Land, growth of local traditions 
in the, 7 
Honorius III., pope, 170, 183, 105 
Hospitallers, or knights of St. John, 

97, 105, 109, 136, 206, 211 
Hugh III., king of Cyprus, 210 
Hugh of Vermandois, 42, 40, 67, Go 
Hungary, conversion of, 16 

TCONIUM, sultan of, 56, 79 
1 Ingulf, 16 



Index. 



INN 

Innocent II., pope, 85 

Innocent III.. po pe, 139, 160, 1S3 

Innocent IV., pope, 195 

Isaac Angelus, emperor of the East 

115, 148 
Isaac of Cyprus, 125 
Isabella, sister ,,f Baldwin IV., king of 

Jerusalem, 123, 172, 177 

TAMES du Chastel, 203 
J Jerome, St., at Bethlehem, 8 
Jerusalem, Assize of, 76, 164; Latin 

kingdom of, 75 ; Latin kings of, 75 ; 

-(.odfrey, 75 ; Baldwin I., 77 ; 

Baldwin II. 81; Fulk of Anjou, 

82 .'Baldwin III., 82; Almeric, 95; 

Baldwin IV., 100; Baldwin V., 101 ; 

Cuy of Lusignan, 101 ; Henry of 

Cha m p a g ne ft ltu lar\ 130; Almeric 

of Lusignan (titular), 139 
Jerusalem, captured by the Persians 

10; by Omar, 12 ; by Hake.n, 1 . ; 

by the Seljukian Toucush, 17 • by 

the first crusaders, 7 r ; by Saladin, 

103 ; by Kameel, 194 
Jews, persecution of the, -59, 88 n8 
Jews, plunder of the, 115" 
Joanna, sister of Richard I , 125 1-0 
Jordino of Courtenay, 81, 94 
John Comnenos, 48 
John of Brienne, 177 
John of England, 133 
John, St., Hospital of, 18 
John the monk, 93 
Joinville, 197 et seq. 



219 



PHI 
Letold of Tournay, 71 
Lothair, cardinal [Innocent III 1 
Louis VI., the Fat, 85 
Louis VII., king of France, 88, ir- 
Louis. IX., king of France, 196^ 

seq. ; death of, 208 
Lusignan, Almeric of, 139, 177 • Guy 

of, 101, 130 J 

Lyons, council of, 209 

M A ™ MEI ?' r ****** from, to 

Khosru II., ir 
Mamelukes, 210 

Manuel, emperor of the East, 89, 09 
Marra, siege of, 6S 
-M.uy. niece of Baldwin IV., king of 

Jerusalem, 177 n 

Maynard, nephew of Conrad of Tyre 

132 J ' 

Merovingian kings of France, 9 s 
Moadhin, sultan of Damascus, 189 
Montferrat, marquis of, i 4 6 
Montfort, Sim,,. ,,f, i 45< I4 „ 2 
Montfort, Simon of. earl of Leicester 

At 195 • 

Qi, Thomas, patriarch of 1 

stantinople, 159, 161, 165 

hi, caliph of Bagdad, 06 
Mourzoufle, 155, 156, 167 



T^AMEEL, sultan of Egypt, 180 • 
treaty of, with Frederick II ' 

189, 193; takes Jerusalem, 104 
Kerboge, 63, 66, 67 
Khosru II., 10 
Khosru Nushirvan, 10 
Kilidje Arslan, 41, 56, 63, 67 
is-nishthood, 45 
Knights Hospitallers, 97, 105, 109, 136 

200, 211 
Knights Templars, 87, 109, 206 
Knights, Teutonic, 122, 206, 211 
Korasmians, 194 

JANCE, discovery of the holy, 65 

Lateran, councils of, 112, 179 
Latin empire of Constantinople, 165 • 

kingdom of Jerusalem, 75 ; emperors 

of Constantinople, 166; kings of 

Jerusalem, 75, 139 
Latins and Greeks, antagonism be- 

tween, 54, 163, 175 
•L.CO til., pope, 20 



JJICiEA, Nikaia[Nice] 

Nice, Seljukian sovereigns of, 
17 : siege of, 55 
Xicephorus 1 1 1. , emperor, 22 
N11 olas IV., pope, 210 
Nicolas, the child crusader, 21=; 
Nineveh, battle of, n 
Xoureddin, sultan of Aieppo, 95,96, 100 

QMAR, the caliph, 12 

Oriflamme, the, 201 
Otho of Brunswick, emperor, 1S2 

pASCAL II., pope, 75 

Pastoureaux, 215 
Pelagius, bishop of Albano, 179 
Peter Barthelemy, 6s 
Peter of Blois, 134 
Peter of Capua, 149, i 5 i 
Peter the Chanter, 143 
Peter of Courtenay, Latin emperor of 

the East, 170 
Peter the Hermit, 25 et seq., 38, 60, 

66, 71, 73 
Philip Augustus, king of France, 11 « 

x 33> 165 ' 

lwv P h'r k \ ng ^ f France ' 2 4- 4i, 7 3 
H ] !Pl y-<r the Fair ^'ngof France, 212 
-Philip of Namur, 171 



220 



Index. 



PHI 

Philip of Swabia, 148, 150 

Philip (titular), Latin emperor of the 

East, 175 
Piacenza, council of, 23 
Pilgrimage, growth of, 7 
Pilgrims, tax on, at Jerusalem, 15 
Phirouz, the renegade, 62 
Placentia, council of, 23 
Pontius, son of Bertrand of Toulouse, 



■p AYMOND, count of Toulouse, 43, 

5i 

Raymond of Tripoli, 101 

Rhazates, n 

Richard, earl of Cornwall, 192, 194 

Richard I., of England, 1*0, 117; at 
Messina, 124 ; at Rhodes,. 125 ; at 
Acre, 126 ; retreats from Bethlehem, 
130 ; at Jaffa, 131 ; imprisonment, 
132 ; return of, to England, 135 

Robert, count of Flanders, 43 

Robert, count of Paris, 50 

Robert duke of Normandy, 42, 58, 61 

Robert, Latin emperor of the East, 
171 

Robert of Courcon, 178, 180 

Rodolph of Hapsburg, 209 

Rodolph the monk, 88 

Roger, successor of Tancred, 79 

CAADI, 177 

*^ Saladin tax or tithe, 115 

Saladin, 95, 98 ; enters Jerusalem, 

106 ; death of, 136 
Samosata, 58 

vSan Germano, treaty of, 184 
Saphadin, 131, 136 ; takes Jaffa, 137 ; 

offers peace, 177 ; death of, 180 
Seljukian Turks, 16 
Shawer, 95, 98 

Shepherds or Pastoureaux, 215 
Shiracouh, 95, 98 
Sibylla, 101, 123 
Sidon, conquest of, 82 
Simon of Montfort, 145, 149, 152 
Simon of Montfort, carl of Leicester, 

Q- 195 
Siroes, 12 

Siward, 82 

Sophronios, patriarch of Jerusalem, 12 

Stephen, apostle of Hungary, 16 



Stephen, count of Chartres, 43, 64, 68, 

78 
Stephen Harding, 84 
Stephen, the child crusader, 215 

-TANCRED, 44, 57, 67, 73, 79 
x Tancred, son of Roger of Apulia, 
124, 136 
Tatikios, 60, 69 

Templars, knights, 87, 109, 206, 210, 213 
Teutonic knights, 122, 206, 210 
Theobald, archdeacon of Liege, 209 
Theobald, count of Champagne, 86, 145 
Theodore Lascaris, 167 m . 

Thierry, count of Flanders, 92 
Thoron, siege of, 137 
Tiberias, battle of, 102 
Toucush, 17 

Trebizond, empire of, 167 
Tristan, 204 
Truce of God, 29, 46 
Turan Shah, 204 
Tyre, conquest of, 82 

T TGOLINO [Gregory IX.] 

^ Urban II., pope, at Piacenza, 23 : 

at Clermont, 24, 29 ; death of, 75 
Urban III., pope, 114 

"\7"ATACES, John, emperor of Nicsea, 

172, 174 
Venice, growth of the power of, 161 
Victor III., pope, 23 
Villehardouin, Geoffrey of, 145, 167, 169 
Vorylas, 169 

YX7ALTER of Brienne, 145 
VV Walter the Penniless, 38, 40 
William Longchamp, bishop of Ely, 133 
William Longsword, bishop of Salis- 
bury, 194, 202 
William Longsword, earl of Salisbury, 



t8o 

William of Melun, 60 
William of Scotland, 113, 118 
William of Tyre, 115 
William the Conqueror, 2, 20 
William Rufus, 38 

VARA, expedition to, 147, 150 
" Zenghis, sultan of Aleppo, 82 
Ziani, doge of Venice, 162 



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